

























• ■ ,\“ 



■* . <■. s"^ \^ 

0 N C ^ ^ ' ' » -t 

'P •'6 ' 



■(?* 


> * 0 


r^ * - . 

O f\ V ^ 

-V, 0 » 

O- . 0 ' > 

* 'bo' “ » ' ' 

», *^ 

.\1 ' ' ■'wb \ ^ 

O ■ y ■' C O . cK R- 

^ 0 ^ ^ -V V ^ * 


0 o 



l?" c^ 




A^'’ ON c 




•s <r-« 

o o' « ^ 



.\V 

■>.’ ' 

^ a'" \ I 8 « ® ^ ^ A^ C 

.a'^ ^ 1 9:j I'O^ 

aN J^nU/y^ ^ ^ 



A 




y V , 

^ 3 • Ao\ . . , % ' * 3 ’ x''^' 

' ^ ^ 

<1 '<^ Vi /> 




'/ '■' s'* A "O ■'o«x^ ,,0 

0 ^ . 

A- v^' . 



0 



^ 0 N C ^ S 

x r*. jf' , ■'A V 



/' ^ 

' vi' , 

O’ 

.y' 

x/. , . » , % ‘ • ' ' \</^ "\ 

" - ^ ^ - - «\ <? 





y' 0 <. 1 . '*' xO 

r-?L 







,- 0 ‘ 



J 


^ s 

y <” \L‘’ ri' L. ' 

, K 0 ^ -S' (, , \ ^ ^ 

; ?, -I - ^ 

■^' '* -’^sw * - -'^ 

■* - 0 ^ </^u^\'^'' <y »•'-■* 

0 N c , ^ * -*.■*> s«' "• o- 

k ^ 






,-0 


V 

o 0 ^ 


. 0 , V^-'-'oAs. . 0 , 

//) CL^ ^ 'TvK^Ife * ' V> \\'' ■ ^ 

A ® o ,SII& : t/> 

-, X//XV /x^^vw *» 

O Y//^^\\y ;t. -S ^ 

^ yJ 

. > ^ // 


< 1 

























‘it 


IT 






^ IT 


* ■ 

W‘ 

4 r 




T-' 


K 


v'*^ 



k » ft 'i' '* ■■ 




m^' ft 

1^ ^ 


• i 




^ % 




# 


, . .' 


Jin 






W 


U '- 


r ' 'fc ' ^ > 



ft '• ■ • *’ fi 

^ ,t.. ♦ /: ^ S!, rc" 


# ’'a' ^ ‘-v ’ < 'U • >>t»S 

4- •. -^ ► . ‘f . f * j ;. w sfdylM 


Tf M 






4, 


»' 


V 



^ :4 ,- .;* =. 

♦jftif p < \i, . 


S' 


’■» 


1^ 




- ft *» - 

V- A^V 1| . 1^. 1 

• . D oi^. ' . 


=j|',V 


k ; 









’/ ^ 




W, 


't* f - 


^ • i J» 

J • >, ^ 


■jr^ 


/ ' -j 


ij" 






'4* 


A^^ iVn. 


• » 


m- 














I’ a'’xv ' \ 


*• : •-- 


•W 




I > 


-■ ■ "-in 

5?' « '■ 


55^ 


it' 


<9* 


r/i 


,<.y 








Ui' 




.V_^4* 






;3«t 


, <r 

' )K> 




'ft' 




'k: 




.f 




p- 


• ^. m' 

. .7 v>_rf'' • • -rA* 


ftr 






iV^ 


Vi: f 












u 




rs? 


'O 




'M' 






jl 




W;.' 

H Jji ^ f* 


1j- 







Ar‘ X 




A* 






OVt>' 


'•)>, ■ ^‘ JB*r < SSujb'-l' 

‘.'ates 1 1 ^ ' 4 r ^ i-.m a. -'^n . 


■‘-^ V 


IV' 


F^'‘ . ' ^ 


' ^ An i? »■' *' ^ > 




X 





s 

a> 

bO 

C3 

Ph 

• 

H 

:2; 

D 


S 

P 

cn 

U 

o 

u 

p 

(/} 

tq 


H 







THE y 



WHITE SLAVE; 


/S'!* 



OR, 


MEMOIRS OF A FUGITIYE. 



\ * 


“All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent 
RIGHTS, of which, when they enter into society, they cannot by any compact deprive 
or divest their posterity, namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of 
acquiring and jHissessing property, and pursuing happiness and safety.” — Virginia 
Bill of Rights, Art. I. 


) > > 


BOSTON: 

TAPPAN AND WHITTEMORE. 

' MILWAUKIE, WIS. : 

ROOD AND WHITTEMORE. 

185 2 . 


linterea according to Act of Congress, in the year 185i2, by 


TAPPAN AND WHITTEMORE, 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 


a < ^ ^ ^ 











♦ ♦ • 


PIIESS OF 0, c. n.\ND, COUXiniX, BOSTOX. 


The earlier chapters of this book were written 
on a southern plantation, during that same sum- 
mer in which the concluding events of the story- 
are supposed to happen, and in the midst of scenes 
and persons suggestive of those which the book 
attempts to portray. Some readers may perhaps 
recognize in them a story with which they have 
before met. The latter portion is new ; a continu- 
ation originally intended, and often called for, but 
never before published. 



MEMOIRS. 


CHAPTER I. 

Ye who would know what evils man can inflict upon 
his fellcw without reluctance, hesitation, or regret ; ye who 
would learn the limit of human endurance, and with what 
bitter anguish and indignant hate, the heart may swell, and 
yet not burst, — peruse these Memoirs ! * 

Mine are no silken sorrows, nor sentimental sufferings ; 
but that stern reality of actual woe, the story of which, 
may perhaps touch even some of those, who are every 
day themselves the authors of misery the same that I en- 
dured. For however the practice of t3Tanny may have 
deadened every better emotion, and the prejudices of edu- 
cation and interest may have hardened the heart, humanity 
will still extort an involuntary tribute ; and men will grow 
uneasy at hearing of those deeds, of which the doing does 
not cost them a moment’s inquietude. 

Should I accomplish no more than this ; should I be 
able, through the triple steel with which the love of money 
and the lust of domination has encircled it, to reach one 
bosom, — ^let the story of my wrongs summon up, in the 
mind of a single oppressor, the dark and dreaded images 
of his own misdeeds, and teach his conscience how to tor- 
ture him with the picture of himself, and I shall be content. 
Next to the tears and the exultations of the emancipated, 
the remorse of tyrants is the choicest offering upon the al- 
tar of liberty ! 


1 # 


6 


MEMOIRS OF 


But perhaps something more may be possible ; — ^not 
likely — ^but to be imagined — and it may be, even faintly 
to be hoped. Perhaps within some youthful breast, in 
which the evil spirits of avarice and tyranny have as yet 
failed to gain unlimited control, I may be able to rekindle 
the smothered and expiring embers of humanity. Spite of 
habits and prejudices inculcated and fostered from his ear- 
liest childhood, spite of the enticements of wealth and 
political distinction, and the still stronger enticements of 
indolence and ease, spite of the pratings of hollow-hearted 
priests, spite of the arguments of time-serving sophists, 
spite of the hesitation and terrors of the weak-spirited and 
wavering ; in spite of evil precept and evil example, he 
dares — that generous and heroic youth ! — to cherish and 
avow the feelings of a man. 

Another Saul among the prophets, he prophesies terrible 
things in the ear of insolent and luxurious tyranny ; in the 
midst of tyrants he dares to preach the good tidings of 
liberty ; in the very school of oppression, he stands boldly 
forth the advocate of human rights ! 

He breaks down the ramparts of prejudice; he dissi- 
pates the illusions of avarice and pride ; he repeals the 
enactments, which though wanting every feature of justice, 
have sacrilegiously usurped the sacred form of law ! He 
snatches the whip from the hand of the master ; he breaks 
forever the fetter of the slave ! 

In place of rH'>cfant toil, drudging for another, he brings 
in smiling industry to labor for herself! All nature seems 
to exult in the change 1 The earth, no longer made barren 
by the tears and the blood of her children, pours forth her 
treasures with redoubled liberality. Existence ceases to 
be torture ; and to live is no longer to millions, the certainty 
of being miserable. 

Chosen Instrument of Mercy 1 Illustrious Deliverer ! 
Come 1 come quickly 1 

Come ! — lest, if thy coming be delayed, there come 
in thy place, he who will be at once, Deliverer and 
Avenger ! 


A FUGITIVE. 


7 


CHAPTER II. 

The county in which I was born, wa.s then, and for 
aught I know, may still be one of the richest and most 
populous in eastern Virginia. My father, colonel Charles 
Moore, was the head of one of the most considerable and 
influential families in that part of the country ; — and family, 
however little weight it may have in other parts of Ameri- 
ca, at the time I was born, was a thing of no slight conse- 
quence in lower Virginia. Nature and education had 
combined to qualify colonel Moore to fill with credit, the 
station in* which his birth had placed him. He was* a 
finished aristocrat; and such he showed himself in every 
word, look and action. There was in his bearing, a con- 
scious superiority which few could resist, softened and ren- 
dered even agreeable by a gentleness and suavity, which 
flattered, pleased and captivated. In fact, he was familiarly 
spoken of among his friends and neighbors, as the faultless 
pattern of a true Virginian gentleman — an encomium by 
which they supposed themselves to convey, in the most 
emphatic manner, the highest possible praise. 

When the war of the American Revolution broke out, 
colonel Moore was a very young man. By birth and edu- 
cation, he belonged, as I have said, to the aristocratic party, 
which being aristocratic, was of course, conservative. But, 
the impulses of youth and patriotism were too strong to be 
resisted. He espoused with zeal, the cause of liberty, and 
by his political activity and influence, contributed not a 
little to its success. 

Of liberty indeed, he was always a warm and energetic 
admirer. Among my earliest recollections of him, is the 
earnestness with which, among his friends and guests, he 
used to vindicate the cause of the French revolution, then 
going on. Of that revolution, throughout its whole prog- 
ress, he was a most eloquent advocate and apologist ; and 
though I understood little or nothing of what he said, the 
spirit and eloquence with which he spoke .could not fail to 
affect me. The rights of man, and the rights of human 


s 


MEMOIRS OF 


nature were phrases, which, although at that time, I was 
quite unconscious of their meaning, I heard so often re- 
peated, that they made an indelible impression upon my 
memory, and in after years, frequently recurred to my 
recollection. 

But colonel Moore was not a mere talker ; he had the 
credit of acting up to his principles, and was universally 
regarded as a man of the greatest good nature, honor and 
uprightness. Several promising young men, who after- 
wards rose to eminence, were indebted for their first start 
in life, to his patronage and assistance. He settled half 
the differences in the county, and never seemed so well 
pleased as when by preventing a lawsuit or a duel, he 
hindered an accidental and perhaps trifling di9p;ute from 
degenerating into a bitter, if not a fatal quarrel. The 
tenderness of his heart, his ready, active benevolence, and 
his sympathy with misfortune, were traits in his character 
spoken of by every body. 

Had I been allowed to choose my own paternity, could 
I possibly have selected a more desirable father ? — But by 
the laws and customs of Virginia, it is not the father but the 
mother, whose rank and condition determine that of the 
child ; — and alas I my mother was a concubine, and a 
slave ! 

Yet those who beheld her for the first time, would hardly 
have imagined, or would willingly have forgotten, that she 
was connected with an ignoble and degraded race. Humble 
as her station might be, she could at least boast possession 
of the most brilliant beauty. The trace of African blood, 
by which her veins were contaminated, was distinctly visi- 
ble ; — but the tint which it imparted to her complexion only 
served to give a peculiar richness to the blush that mantled 
over her cheek. Her long black hair, which she under- 
stood how to arrange with an artful simplicity, and the flash- 
ing of her dark eyes, which changed their expression with 
every change of feeling, corresponded exactly to her com- 
plexion, and completed a picture which might perhaps be 
matched in Spain or Italy, but for which, it would be in 
vain to seek a rival among the pale-faced and languid beau- 
ties of eastern Virginia. 


A FUGITIVE. 


9 


I describe her more like a lover than a son. But in 
truth, her beauty was so uncommon, as to draw my atten- 
tion while I was yet a child ; and many an hour have I 
watched her, almost with a lover’s earnestness, while she 
fondled me on her lap, and tears and smiles chased each 
other alternately over a face, the expression of which was 
ever changing, yet always beautiful. She was the most 
affectionate of mothers ; the mixture of tenderness, grief 
and pleasure, with which she always seemed to regard me, 
gave a new vivacity to her beauty ; and it was probably 
this, which so early and so strongly fixed my attention. 

But I was very far from being her only admirer. Her 
beauty was notorious through all that part of the country ; 
and colonel Moore had been frequently tempted to sell her 
by the offer of very high prices. All such offers however, 
he had steadily rejected ; for he especially prided himself 
upon owning the swiftest horse, the handsomest wench, and 
the finest pack of hounds in the “ Ancient Dominion.” 

Now it may seem odd to some people, in some parts of 
the world, that colonel Moore being such a man as I have 
described him, should keep a mistress and be the father 
of illegitimate children. Such persons however, must be 
totally ignorant of the state of things in the slave-holding 
states of America. 

Colonel Moore was married to an amiable woman, whom, 
I dare say, he loved and respected ; and in the course of 
time, she made him the happy father of two sons and as 
many daughters. This circumstance however, did not 
hinder him, any more than it does any other American 
planter, from giving, in the mean time, a very free indul- 
gence to his amorous temperament among his numerous 
slaves at Spring-Meadow, — ^for so his estate was called. 
Many of the young women occasionally boasted of his 
attentions ; though generally, at any one time, he did not 
have more than one or two acknowledged favorites. 

My mother was for several years, distinguished by colonel 
Moore’s very particular regard; and she brought him no 
less than six children, all of whom, except myself, who was 
the eldest, were lucky enough to die in infancy. 

From ?ny mother I inherited some imperceptible portion 


10 


MEMOIRS OF 


of African blood, and with it, the base and cursed condition 
of a slave. But though born a slave, I inherited all my 
father’s proud spirit, sensitive feelings and ardent tempera- 
ment; and as regards natural endowments, whether of 
mind or body, I am bold to assert, that he had more reason 
to be proud of me than of either of his legitimate and ac- 
knowledged sons. 


CHAPTER III. 

That education is the most effectual, which commences 
earliest — a maxim well understood in that part of the 
world in which it was my misfortune to be bom. As it 
sometimes happens there, that one half of a man’s children 
are born masters and the other half slaves, it has become 
sufficiently obvious how necessary it is, to begin, by times, 
the course of discipline proper to train them up for these 
very different situations. It is, accordingly, the general 
custom, that young master, almost from the hour of his birth, 
has allotted to him, some little slave near his own age, upon 
whom he begins, from the time he can go alone, to practise 
his apprenticeship of tyranny. It so happened that within 
less than a year after my birth, colonel Moore’s wife pre- 
sented him with her second son, James ; and while we 
both slept unconscious in our cradles, I was duly assigned 
over and appointed to be the body-servant of my younger 
brother. It is in this capacity, of master James’s boy, that 
following back the traces of memory, I first discover myself. 

The natural and usual consequences of giving one child 
absolute authority over another, may be easily imagined. 
The love of domination is perhaps the strongest of our pas- 
sions, and it is surprising how soon the veriest child will 
become perfect in the practice of tyranny. Of this, colonel 
Moore’s eldest son, William, or master William, as he was 
called at Spring-Meadow, was a striking instance. He 
was the terror and bugbear, not only of Joe, his own boy, 
but of all the children on the place. That unthinking and 
inutional delight in the exercise of cruelty, which is some- 


A FUGITIVE. 


11 


times displayed by a wayward child, seemed in him, almost 
a passion ; and this passion, by perpetual indulgence, was 
soon fostered into a habit. When any delinquent slave was 
to be punished, he contrived if possible to find it out, and 
to be present at the infliction ; so that he soon became an 
adept in all the hoirible practices and disgusting slang of an 
overseer. He always went armed with a whip, twice as 
^long as himself, and upon the least opposition to his whims 
and caprices, was ready to show his skill in the use of it. 
All this he took some little pains to conceal from his father ; 
who however, was pretty careful not to see what he could, 
by no means, approve, but what, at the same time — indul- 
gent father as he was — ^he would have found it very difficult 
to prevent or to cure. 

Master James, to whose service, I was particularly ap- 
pointed, was a very different boy. Sickly and weak from 
his birth, his temper was gentle and his mind effeminate. 
He had an affectionate disposition, and soon conceived a 
fondness for me, which I very thankfully returned. He 
protected me from the tyranny of master William by his 
entreaties, his tears, and what had much more weight with 
that amiable youth, by threats of complaining to his father, 
and making a complete exposure of his brutal and cruel 
behavior. 

I soon learned to put up with and to pardon, an occa- 
sional pettishness and ill humor, for which master James’s 
bad health furnished a ready excuse ; and by flattery and 
apparent obsequiousness, for a child learns and practises 
such arts as readily as a man, I presently came to have a 
great influence over him. He was the master, and I the 
slave ; but while we were both children, this artificial dis- 
tinction had less potency, and I found little difficulty ip 
maintaining that actual pre-eminence, to which my superior 
vigor both of body and mind, so justly entitled me. 

When master James had reached the age of five yeai^, it 
was judged expedient by his father, that he should be initia- 
ted into the mdiments of learning. To learn the letters was 
a laborious undertaking enough, — ^but for putting them into 
words, my young master seemed to have no genius what- 
ever. He was not destitute of ambition ; he was indeed 


12 


MEMOIRS OF 


very desirous to learn ; it was the ability, not the incli- 
nation that was wanting. In this difficulty, he had 
recourse to me, who was on all occasions, his chief coun- 
sellor. By putting our heads together, we soon hit upon a 
plan. My memory was remarkably good, while that of 
my poor little master was very miserable. We arranged 
therefore, that the family tutor should first teach me the 
letters and the abs, which my strong memory, we thought, 
would enable me easily to retain, and which I was gradu- 
ally, and between plays, as opportunity served, to instill 
into the mind of master James. This plan we found to an- 
swer admirably. Neither the tutor nor colonel Moore 
made any objection to it ; for all that colonel Moore desired 
was, that his son should learn to read ; and the tutor was 
very willing to shift off the most laborious part of his task 
upon my shoulders. 

As yet, no one had dreamed of those barbarous and de- 
testable laws — unparalleled in any other codes, and destined 
to be the everlasting disgrace of America — ^by which it has 
been made a crime, punishable with fine and imprisonment, 
to teach a slave to read. 

It is not enough that custom and the proud scorn of 
unfeeling tyranny unite to keep the slave in hopeless and 
helpless ignorance, but the laws too have openly become a 
party to this accursed conspiracy 1 Yes, I believe they 
would tear out our very eyes, — and that too by virtue of a 
regularly enacted statute — ^liad they ingenuity enough to 
invent a way of enabling us to drudge and delve without 
them ! 

I soon learned to read, and before long, I made master 
James almost as good a reader as myself. As he was sub- 
ject to frequent fits' of illness, which confined him to the 
house, and disabled him from indulging in those active 
sports to whicli boys are chiefly devoted, his father obtained 
for him a large collection of books adapted to his age, which 
he and I used to read over together, and in which we took 
great delight. 

In the further progress of my young master’s studies I 
was still his associate ; for though the plan of teaching me 
first, in order that I might afterwards teach him, was pur- 


A FUGITIVE. 


13 


sued no longer, yet as I had a desire to learn, as well as a 
quick apprehension, 1 found no difficulty in extracting every 
day from master James, the substance of his lessons. In- 
deed, if there was any difficulty in them, he was in the 
constant habit of appealing to me for assistance. In this 
way, 1 acquired some elementary knowledge of arithmetic 
and geography, and even a smattering of latin. 

These acquisitions however, I took great pains to con- 
ceal, since even the fact that I could read, though it in- 
creased my consequence among the servants, exposed me 
to a good deal of ridicule to which I was very sensitive. I 
was not looked upon, as I suppose they now look upon a 
slave, who knows how to read and who exhibits some 
marks of sense and ability, as a dreadful monster breathing 
war and rebellion, and plotting to cut the throats of all the 
good people in America ; I was regarded rather as a sort 
of prodigy — like a three legged hen, or a sheep with four 
eyes ; a thing to be produced and exhibited for the enter- 
tainment of strangers. Frequently at a dinner party, after 
the Madeira had circulated pretty freely, I was set to read 
paragraphs in the newspapers, to amuse my master’s tipsy 
guests, and was puzzled, perplexed and tormented, by all 
sorts of absurd, ridiculous, and impertinent questions, which 
1 was obliged to answer under penalty of having a wine 
glass, a bottle, or a plate flung at my head. Master 
William especially, as he was prevented from using his 
whip upon me, as freely as he wished, strove to indemnify 
himself by making me the butt of his wit. He took great 
pride in the nick-name of the “ learned nigger,” which he 
had invented and always applied to me; — though God 
knows, that my cheek was little less fair than his, and 1 
cannot help hoping that at least, my soul was whiter. 

These, it may be thought, were trifling vexations. In 
truth they were so ; but it cost me many a struggle before 
I could learn to endure them with any tolerable patience. 

I was compensated in some measure, by the pleasure I took 
in listening, as I stood behind my master’s chair, to the con- 
versation of the company, — I mean their conviTsation 
before they set regularly in to drinking ; for every dinner 
party was sure to wind up with a general frolic. 


14 


MEMOIRS OF 


Colonel Moore kept an open house, and almost every 
day, he had some of his friends, relatives, or neighbors, at 
his table. He was himself an eloquent and most agreeable 
talker; his voice was soft and musical, and he always ex- 
pressed himself with a great deal of point and vivacity. 
Many of his guests were well informed men ; and though 
politics was always the leading topic of conversation, a great 
variety of other subjects were occasionally discussed. Colo- 
nel Moore, as I have already observed, was himself a warm 
democrat — republican was then the phrase — for democrat, 
however fond the Americans have since become of the 
name, was at that time regarded as an epithet of reproach. 
The greater part of those who frequented colonel Moore’s 
house, entertained the same liberal opinions on political sub- 
jects. I listened to their conversation with eagerness and 
pleasure ; and when I heard them talk of equal rights, and 
declaim against tyranny and oppression, my heart would 
swell with emotions of which I scarcely understood the 
meaning. All this time, I made no personal application of 
what I heard and felt. It was only the abstract beauty of 
liberty and equality, of which I had learned to be enam- 
ored. It was the French republicans with whom I sympa- 
thized ; it was the Austrian and English tyrants against 
whom my indignation was roused ; it was John Adams and 
his atrocious gag law\ I had not yet learned to think about 
myself. What I saw around me I had always been accus- 
tomed to see, and it appeared as it were, the fixed order of 
nature. Though bora a slave, I had, as yet, experienced 
scarcely any thing of the miseries of that wretched condi- 
tion. I was singularly fortunate in my young master, to 
whom I was, in many respects, as much a companion as a 
servant. By his favor, and through means of my mother, 
who still continued a favorite with colonel Moore, I enjoyed 
more indulgences than any other servant on the place. 
Comparing my situation with that of the field hands, I 
might pronounce myself fortunate indeed ; and though ex- 
posed to occasional mortifications, enough to give me already 
a foretaste of the bitter cup which every one who lives a 
slave must swallow, my youth and the buoyant vivacity of 
my temper a§ yet sustained me. 


A FUGITIVE. 


15 


At this time, I did not know that colonel Moore was my 
father. That gentleman was indebted for no inconsider- 
able part of his high reputation, to a very strict attention to 
those conventional observances which so often usurp the 
place of morals. Some observances of this sort, which pre- 
vail in America, are sufficiently remarkable. It is consid- 
ered for instance, no crime whatever, for a master to be, if he 
chooses, the father of every infant slave born upon his planta- 
tion. Yet it is esteemed a very grave breach of propriety, 
indeed almost an unpardonable crime, for such a father 
ever, in any way, to acknowledge or take any notice, of any 
of his unfortunate children. Imperious custom demands 
that he should treat them, in every respect, like his other 
slaves. If he drive them into the field to labor, if he sell 
them at auction to the highest bidder, it is all well. But 
if he audaciously undertake to exhibit towards them, in any 
way, the slightest indication of paternal tenderness, he may 
be sure that his character will be assailed by the tongue of 
universal slander ; that his every weak point and unjustifi- 
able action will be carefully sought out, malignantly magni- 
fied, and ostentatiously exposed ; that he will be compelled 
to run a sort of moral gantlet, and will be represented 
among all the better sort of people, as every thing that is 
infamous, base and contemptible. 

Colonel Moore was far too wise a man, to entertain the 
slightest idea of exposing himself to any thing of that sort. 
He had always kept the best society, — and though he might 
be a democrat in politics, he was certainly very much of an 
aristocrat and an exclusive in his feelings. Of course, he 
had the same sort of indescribable horror, at the thought of 
violating any of the settled proprieties of the society in 
which he moved, that a modern belle has of cotton lace, or 
a modern dandy of an iron fork. This being the case, 
nobody will wonder — so far at least as colonel Moore had 
any control over the matter — that I was still ignorant who 
my father was. 

But though a secret to me, it certainly was not so to 
colonel Moore’s friends and visitors. If nothing else had 
betrayed it, the striking resemblance between us, would 


16 


MEMOIRS OF 


certainly have done so ; and although that same regard to 
propriety, which prevented colonel Moore from ever no- 
ticing the relationship, also tied up the tongues of his guests, 
yet, after I had learned the secret, there immediately oc- 
curred to my mind the true explanation of certain sly jests 
and distant allusions, which had sometimes been dropped 
towards the end of a dinner, by some of those guests whom 
deep potations had inspired at once with wit and veracity. 
These brilliancies, of which I had never been able to under- 
stand the meaning, were always ill received by colonel 
Moore, and by all the soberer part of the company, and 
were frequently followed by a command to me and the 
other servants to quit the room ; but why or wherefore, till 
I became possessed of the key above mentioned, I was 
always at a great loss to determine. 

The secret which my father did not choose, and which 
my mother did not dare to communicate, I might easily 
have obtained from my fellow servants. But at this time, 
like most of the lighter complexioned slaves, I felt a sort 
of contempt for my duskier brothers in misfortune. I kept 
myself as much as possible, at a distance from them, and 
scorned to associate with men a little darker than myself. 
So ready are slaves to imbibe all the ridiculous prejudices 
of their oppressors, and themselves to, add new links to the 
chain, which deprives them of their liberty ! 

But let me do my father justice ; for I do not believe 
that he was totally destitute of a father’s feelings. Though 
he never made the slightest acknowledgment of the claims 
which I had upon him, yet I am sure, in his own heart, he 
did not totally deny their validity. There was a tone of 
good natured indulgence whenever he spoke to me, an air 
of kindness, which though he always had it, seemed toward 
me, to have in it something peculiar. At any rate, he suc- 
ceeded in captivating my affections ; for though I regai’ded 
him only as my master, I loved him very sincerely 


A FUGITIVE. 


17 


CHAPTER IV. 

I WAS about seventeen years old, when my mother was 
attacked by a fever, which proved fatal to her. She early 
had a presentiment of her fate ; and before the disorder had 
made any great progress, she sent me word that she desired 
to see me. 1 found her in bed. SIiq begged the woman 
udio nursed her, to leave us together, and bade me sit down 
by her bed-side. Having told me that she feared she was 
going to die, she could not think it kind to me, she said, to 
leave the world, without first telling me a secret, which 
possibly, I might find hereafter of some consequence. I 
begged her to go on, and waited with impatience for the 
promised information. She began with a short account of 
her own life. Her mother was a slave ; her father was a 
certain colonel Randolph — a scion of one of the great Vir- 
ginian families. She had been raised as a lady’s maid, and 
on the marriage of colonel Moore, had been purchased by 
him and presented to his wife. She was then quite a girl. 
As she grew older and her beauty became more noticeable, 
she found much favor in the eyes of her master. She had 
a neat little house, with a double set of rooms — an arrange- 
ment, as much for colonel Moore’s convenience as her own ; 
and though some light tasks of needle-work were sometimes 
required of her, yet as nobody chose to quarrel with mas- 
ter’s favorite, she lived, henceforward, a very careless, 
indolent, but as she told me, a very unhappy life. 

For a part of this unhappiness she was indebted to her- 
self. The air of superiority she assumed in her intercourse 
with the other servants, made them all hate her, and induced 
them to improve every opportunity of vexing and mortifying 
her ; — and to all sorts of feminine mortifications she was as 
sensitive as any belle that ever existed. But though vain of 
her beauty and her master’s favor, she was not ill-tempered ; 
and the foolish pride from which she suffered, sprung in her, 
as a similar feeling did in me, from a groundless, though 
common prejudice. Indeed our situation was so' superior to 
that of most of the other slaves, that we naturally imagined 
2 * 


18 


MEMOIRS OF 


ourselves, in some sort, a superior race. It was doubtless 
under the influence of this feeling, that my mother, having 
told me who my father was, observed with a smile and a 
self-complacent air, which even the tremors of her fever did 
not prevent from being apparent, that both on the father’s 
and the mother’s side, I had running in my veins, the best 
blood of Virginia — the blood, she added, of the Moores 
and the Randolphs ! 

Alas ! she did not seem to recollect that though I might 
count all the nobles of Virginia among my ancestors, one 
drop of blood imported from Africa — though that too, might 
be the blood of kings and chieftains, — ^would be enough to 
taint the whole pedigree, and to condemn me to perpetual 
slavery, even in the house of my own father ! 

The information which my mother communicated, made 
little impression upon me at the moment. My principal 
anxiety was for her ; for she had always been the tenderest 
and most affectionate of parents. The progress of her 
disorder was rapid, and on the third day she ceased to live. 
1 lamented her with the sincerest grief. The sharpness of 
my sorrow was soon over ; but my spirits did not seem to 
regain their former tone. The thoughtless gaiety, which 
till now had shed a sort of sunshine over my life, seemed to 
desert me. My thoughts began to recur very frequently, to 
the information which my mother had communicated. I hard- 
ly know how to describe the efiect which it seemed to have 
upon me. Nor is it easy to tell what were its actual effects, 
or what ought to be ascribed to other and more general causes. 
Perhaps that revolution of feeling, which I now experienced, 
should be attributed in a great measure, to the change from 
boyhood to manhood, through which I was passing. Hither- 
to things had seemed to happen like the events of a dream, 
without touching me deeply or affecting me permanently. 
I was sometimes vexed and dissatisfied ; I had my occa- 
sional sorrows and complaints. But those sorrows were 
soon over, and as after summer showers the sun shines out 
the brighter, so my transient sadness was soon succeeded 
by a more lively gaiety, which, as soon as immediate 
gHevanc^s were forgotten, burst forth, unsubdued either by 
reflections on the past, or anxieties for the future. In that 


A FUGITIVE. 


19 


gaiety there was indeed scarcely anything of substantial 
pleasure ; it originated rather in a careless insensibility. It 
was like the glare of the moon-beams, bright, but cold. 
Such as it was however, it was far more comfortable, than 
the state of feeling by which it now began to be succeeded. 
My mind seemed to be filled with indefinite anxieties, of 
which I could divine neither the causes nor the cure. 
There was, as it were, a heavy weight upon my bosom, an 
unsatisfied craving for something, I knew not what, a long- 
ing which I could do nothing to satisfy, because I could 
not tell its object. I would be often lost in thought, but 
my mind did not seem to fix itself to any certain aim, and 
after hours of apparently the deepest meditation, I should 
have been very much at a loss to tell about what I had 
been thinking. 

But sometimes my reflections would take a more definite 
shape. I would begin to consider what I was and what I 
had to anticipate. The son of a freeman, yet born a slave 1 
Endowed by nature with abilities, which I should never 
be permitted to exercise ; possessed of knowledge, which 
already, I found it expedient to conceal ! The slave of my 
own father, the servant of my own brother, a bounded, lim- 
ited, confined, and captive creature, who did not dare to go 
out of sight of his master’s house without a written permis- 
sion to do so ! Destined to be the sport, of I knew not 
whose caprices ; forbidden in anything to act for myself, or 
to consult my own happiness ; compelled to labor all my 
life at another’s bidding ; and liable every hour and instant, 
to oppressions the most outrageous, and degradations the 
most humiliating ! 

These reflections soon grew so bitter that I struggled hard 
to suppress them. But that was not always in my power. 
Again and again, in spite of all my efforts, these hateful 
ideas would start up and sting me into anguish. 

My young master still continued Wnd as ever. I was 
changing to a man, but he still remained a boy. His pro- 
tracted ill health, which had checked his growth, appeared 
also to retard his mental maturity. He seemed every day 
tO fall more and more under my influence ; and every day 
my attachment to him grew stronger. He was in fact, my 


20 


MEMOIRS OF 


sole hope. While I remained with him, I might reasonably 
expect to escape the utter bitterness of slavery. In his 
eyes, I was not a mere servant. He regarded me rather as 
a loved and trusted companion. Indeed, though he had 
the name and prerogatives of master, I was much less 
under his control than he was under mine. There was 
between us, something of a brotherly affection, at least of 
that kind, which may exist between foster brothers, though 
neither of us ever alluded to our actual relationship, and he 
probably, was ignorant of it. 

I loved master James as well as ever ; but towards colonel 
Moore, my feelings underwent a rapid and a radical change. 
While I considered myself merely as his slave, his apparent 
kindness had gained my affections, and there was nothing I 
would not have done or suffered, for so good natured and 
condescending a master. But after I had learned to look 
upon myself as his son, I began to feel that I might justly 
claim as a right, what I had till now regarded as a pure 
gratuity. I began to feel that I might claim much more, 
— even an equal birth-right with my brethren. Occasional- 
ly, I had read the bible ; and I now turned with new 
interest to the story of Hagar, the bond-woman, and 
Ishmael her son ; and as I read how an angel came to their 
relief, when the hard-hearted Abraham had driven them 
into the wilderness, there seemed to grow up within me, a 
wild, strange, uncertain hope, that in some accident, I knew 
not what, I too might find succor and relief. At the same 
time, with this irrational hope, a new spirit of bitterness burst 
in upon my soul. Unconsciously I clenched my hands, and 
set my teeth, and fancied myself, as it were, another 
Ishmael, wandering in the wilderness, every man’s hand 
against me, and my hand against every man. The injus- 
tice of my unnatural parent, stung me deeper and deeper, 
and all my love for him was turned into hate. The atrocity 
of those laws which made me a slave — a slave in the house 
of my own father — seemed to glare before my too prophetic 
eyes in letters of blood. Young as I was, and as yet un- 
touched, I trembled for the future, and cursed the country 
and the hour that gave me birth ! 

I endeavored as much as possible, to conceal these new 


* 




% 



I 


ARCHY LOSES HIS BEST FRIENH. Page 21 




A FUGITIVE. 


21 


feelings with which I was tormented ; and as deceit is one 
of those defences against tyranny of which a slave early 
learns to avail himself, I was not unsuccessful. My young 
master would sometimes find me in tears ; and sometimes 
when I would be lost in thought,* he complained of my 
inattention. But I put him off with plausible excuses; 
and though he suspected there was something which 1 did 
not tell him, and would frequently say to me, Come 
Archy, boy, let me know what it is that troubles you,” — I 
made light of the matter and laughed off his suspicions. 

I was now about to lose this kind master, in whose 
tenderness and affection I found the sole palliative that 
could make slavery tolerable. His health which had always 
been bad, grew rapidly worse, and confined him first to his 
chamber and then to his bed. I nursed him during his 
whole illness with a mother’s tenderness and assiduity. 
Never was master more faithfully served ; — but it was the 
friend, not the slave, who rendered these attentions. He 
was not insensible to my services ; he did not seem to like 
that any one but I should be about him, and it was only 
from my hand that he would take his physic or his food. 
But it was not in the power of physician or of nurse to 
save him. He wasted daily, and grew weaker every hour. 
The fatal crisis soon came. His weeping friends were col- 
lected about his bed, — ^but the tears mey shed were not as 
bitter as mine. Almost with his last breath he recom- 
mended me to the good graces of his father ; but the man 
who had closed his heart to the promptings of paternal 
tenderness, was not likely to give much weight to the 
requests of a dying son. He bade his friends farewell, — 
he pressed my hand in his ; and, with a gentle sigh, he 
expired in my arms. 


CHAPTER V. 


The family (5f colonel Moore knew well how truly I had 
loved, and how faithfully I had served my young master. 


22 


MEMOIRS OF 


They respected the proTound depth of my grief, and for a 
week or two, I was suffered to weep on unmolested. My 
feelings were no longer of that acute and piercing kind 
which I have described in the preceding chapter. The 
temperament of the mind is forever changing. That' state 
of preternatural sensibility, of which I have attempted to 
give an idea, had disappeared when my attention became 
wholly occupied in the care of my dying master. It was 
succeeded by a dull and stupid sorrow. Apparently I now 
had increased cause for agitation and alarm. That which 
1 then dreaded, had happened. My young master, upon 
w^hom all my hopes were suspended, lived no longer, and I 
knew not what was to become of me. But the fit of fear 
and anxious anticipation was over ; and I now waited my 
fate with a sort of stupid and careless indifference. 

Though not called upon to do it, I continued as usual to 
wait upon my master’s table. For several days, I took my 
place instinctively near where master James’s chair ought 
to have stood ; till the sight of the vacant place drove me 
in tears to the opposite comer. In the mean time, nobody 
called upon me to do anything, or seemed to notice that I 
was present. Even master William made an effort to re- 
press his habitual insolence. 

But this could not last long. Indeed it was a stretch of 
indulgence, which no due but a favorite servant could have 
expected ; since slaves, in general, are thought to have no 
business to be sorry — if it makes them unable to work. 

One morning after breakfast, master William having dis- 
cussed his toast and coffee, began by telling his father, that 
in his opinion, the servants at Spring-Meadow, were a great 
deal too indulgently treated. He was by this time, a smart, 
dashing, elegant young man, having returned upwards of a 
year before, from college, and quite lately, from Charleston, 
in South Carolina, whither he had been' to spend a wdnter, 
and as his father expressed it, to wear off the rusticity of 
the school-room. It w^as there perhaps, that he had learned 
the new precepts of humanity, which he was now preach- 
ing. He declared that any tenderness towards a servant 
only tended to make him insolent and discontented, and was 
quite thrown away on the ungrateful rascals. Then, look 


A FUGITIVE. 


23 


ing about, as if in search of some victim upon whom to 
practise a doctrine so consonant to his own disposition, his 
eye lighted upon me. ‘‘ There’s that boy Archy — I’ll bet 
a hundred to one I could make liim one of the best ser- 
vants in the world. He’s a bright fellow naturally, and 
nothing has spoil’d him, but poor James’s over indulgence. 
Come father, just be good enough to give him to me, I 
want another servant most deHlishly.” 

Without stopping for an answer, he hastened out of the 
room, having, as he said, two jockey races to attend that 
morning ; and what was more, a cock-fight into the bargain. 
There was nobody else at table. Colonel Moore turned 
towards me. He began with commending very highly, my 
faithful attachment to his poor son James. As he men- 
tioned his son’s name the tears stood in his eyes, and for a 
moment or two he was unable to speak. He recovered 
himself presently, and added — “I hope now you will 
transfer all this same zeal and affection to master William.” 

These words roused me in a moment. I knew master 
William to be a tyrant from whose soul custom had long 
since obliterated what little humanity nature had bestowed 
upon him ; and to judge from what he had let drop that 
morning, he had of late improved upon his natural inclina- 
tion for cruelty, and had proceeded to the final length of 
reducing tyranny into a system and a science. I knew too 
that from childhood, he had entertained a particular spite 
against me ; and 1 dreaded, lest he was already devising the 
means of inflicting upon me with interest, all those insults 
and injuries from which the protection of his younger 
brother had hitherto shielded me. 

It was with horror and alarm, that I found myself in 
danger of falling into such hands. I threw myself at my 
master’s feet and besought him, with all the eloquence of 
grief and fear, not to give me to master William. The 
terms in which I spoke of his son, though I chose the 
mildest I could think of, and the horror I expressed at the 
thoughts of becoming his servant, though I endeavored as 
much as possible, to save the father’s feelings, seemed to 
make him angry. The smile left his lip, and his brow grew 
dark and contracted. I began to despair of escaping the 


24 


MESIOIRS OF 


wretched fate that awaited me ; and my despair drove me 
to a very rash and foolish action. For emboldened by the 
danger of becoming the slave of master William, I dared 
to hint — though distantly and obscurely — at the informa- 
don which my mother had communicated on her death 
bed ; and I even ventured something like a half appeal to 
colonel Moore’s paternal tenderness. At first he did not 
seem to understand me ; but the moment he began to com- 
prehend my meaning, his face grew black as a thunder 
cloud, then became pale, and immediately was suffused 
with a burning blush, in which shame and rage were 
equally commingled. I now gave myself up for lost, and 
expected an instant out-break of fury ; — ^but after a mo- 
• mentary struggle, colonel Moore seemed to regain his 
composure ; even the habitual smile returned to his lips ; 
and without taking any notice of my last appeal, or giving 
any further signs of having understood it, he merely 
remarked, that he did not know how to refuse master 
William’s request, nor could he comprehend the meaning of 
my reluctance. It was mighty foolish ; still he was willing 
to indulge me so far, as to allow me the choice of entering 
into master William’s service, or going into the field. This 
alternative was proposed with an air and a manner, which 
was intended to stop my mouth, and allow me nothing but 
the bare liberty of choosing. It was indeed, no very 
agreeable alternative. But any thing, even the hard labor, 
scanty fare, and harsh treatment, to which I knew the field 
hands were subjected, seemed preferable to becoming the 
sport of master William’s tyranny. I was piqued too, at 
the cavalier manner in which my request had been treated, 
and I did not hesitate. I thanked colonel Moore for his 
great goodness, and at once, made choice of the field. He 
seemed rather surprised at my selection, and with a smile 
which bordered close upon a sneer, bade me report myself 
to Mr Stubbs. 

An overseer, is regarded in all those parts of slave-hold- 
ing America, with which I ever became acquainted, very 
much in the same light in which people, in countries uncursed 
with slavery, look upon a hangman ; and as this latter em- 
ployment, however useful and necessary, has never sue- 


A FUGITIVE. 


25 


ceeded in becoming respectable, so the business of an 
overseer is likely from its nature, always to continue 
contemptible and degraded. The young lady who dines 
heartily on lamb, has a sentimental horror of the butcher 
who killed it ; and the slave owner who lives luxuriously 
on the forced labor of his slaves, has a like sentimental 
abhorrence of the man who holds the whip and compels the 
labor. He is like a receiver of stolen goods, who cannot 
bear the thoughts of stealing himself, but who has no objec- 
tion to live upon the proceeds of stolen property. A thief 
is but a thief ; an overseer but an overseer. The slave 
owner prides himself upon the honorable appellation of a 
planter ; and the receiver of stolen goods assumes the 
character of a respectable shop-keeper. By such con- 
temptible juggle do men deceive not themselves only, but 
oft-times the world also. 

Mr Thomas Stubbs was overseer at Spring-Meadow, a 
person with whose name, appearance and character I was 
perfectly familiar, though hitherto I had been so fortunate 
as to have had very little corHmunication with him. 

He was a thick set, clumsy man, about fifty, with a little 
bullet head, covered with short tangled hair, and stuck close 
upon his shoulders. His face was curiously mottled and 
spotted, for what with sunshine, what with whiskey, and 
what with ague and fever, brown, red and sallow seemed 
to have put in a joint claim to the possession of it, without 
having yet been able to arrive at an amicable partition. He 
was generally to be seen on horseback, leaning forward over 
his saddle, and brandishing a long thick whip of twisted 
cow-hide, which from time to time, he applied over the 
head and shoulders of some unfortunate slave. If you were 
within hearing, his conversation, or rather his commands 
and observations, would have appeared a string of oaths, 
from the midst of which it was not very easy to disentangle 
his meaning. Some such exclamations were pretty 
sure to begin every sentence, and others to end it. It 
was however, only when Mr Stubbs had sole possession of 
the field, that he sprinkled his orders with this strong spice 
of brutality ; — for when colonel Moore or any other gentle- 
man happened to be riding by, he could assume quite an air 
3 


26 


MEMOIRS OF 


of gentleness and moderation, and what appears very sur- 
prising, was actually able to express himself, with not more 
than one oath to every other sentence. 

Mr Stubbs, in his management of the plantation did not 
confine himself to hard words. He used his whip as freely 
as his tongue. Colonel Moore had received a European 
education! and like every man educated any where — except 
on a slave estate — he had a great dislike to all unnecessary 
cruelty. He was usually made very angry, about once a 
week, by some brutal act on the part of his overseer. But 
having satisfied his outraged feelings by declaring himself 
very much offended, and Mr Stubbs’s proceedings to be quite 
intolerable, he ended with suffering things to go on just as 
before. The truth was, Mr Stubbs understood making 
crops ; and sucli a man was too valuable to be given up, 
for the mere sentimental satisfaction of protecting the slaves 
from his tyranny. 

It was a great change to me, after having been accustomed 
to the elegance and propriety of colonel Moore’s house, and 
the gentle rule and light service of master James, to pass 
under the despotic control of a vulgar, ignorant and briffal 
blackguard. Besides, I had never been accustomed to se- 
vere and regular labor ; and it was trying indeed to submit 
at once to the hard work of the field. However, I resolved 
to make the best of it. I was strong, and use would soon 
make my tasks more tolerable. I knew well enough, that 
Mr Stubbs was totally destitute of all humane feelings, but 
I had no reason to suppose that he entertained towards me 
any of that malignity which I had so much dreaded in mas- 
ter William. From what I had known of him, I did not 
judge him to be a very bad tempered man ; and I took it 
for granted that he cursed and whipped, not so much out 
of spite and ill feeling, but as a mere matter of business. 
He seemed to imagine, like every other overseer, that it 
was impossible to manage a plantation in any other way. 
My diligence, 1 hoped might enable me to escape the lash ; 
and Mr Stubbs’s vulgar abuse, however provoking the other 
servants might esteem it, I thought 1 might easily despise. 

Mr Stubbs listened to my account of myself very gra- 
ciously, all the time, rolling his tobacco from one cheek to 


A FUGITIVE. 


21 


the other, and squinting at me with one of his little twink- 
ling grey eyes. Having cursed me to his satisfaction for 

blunder-head,” he bade me follow him to the field. A 
large clumsy hoe, with a handle six feet long, was put into 
my hands, and I was kept hard at work all day. 

At dark, I was suffered to quit the field, and the overseer 
pointed out to me a miserable little hovel, about ten feet 
square, and half as many high, with a leaky roof, and with- 
out either floor or window. This was to be my house, or 
rather I was to share it with Billy, a young slave about my 
own age. 

To this wretched hut, I removed a chest, containing my 
clothes and a few other things, such as a slave is permitted 
to possess. By way of bed and bedding, I received a sin- 
gle blanket, about as big as a large pocket handkerchief ; 
and a basket of corn and a pound or two of damaged bacon, 
were given me as my week’s allowance of provisions. , But 
as I was totally destitute of pot, kettle, knife, plate, or dish 
of any kind, — for these are conveniences which slaves must 
procure as they can, — I was in some danger of being obliged 
to make my supper on raw bacon. Billy saw my distress 
and took pity on me. He helped me beat my com into 
hominy, and lent me his own little kettle to cook it in ; so 
that about midnight I was able to break a fast of some six- 
teen or twenty hours. My chest being both broad and long, 
served tolerably well for bed, chair and table. I sold a part 
of my clothes, which were indeed much too fine for a field 
hand ; and having bought myself a knife, a spoon and a 
kettle, I was able to put my house-keeping into tolerable 
order. 

My accommodations were as good as a field hand had a 
right to expect ; but they were not such as to make me 
particularly happy ; especially as I had been used to some- 
thing better. My hands were blistered with the hoe, and 
coming in at night completely exhausted by a sort of labor 
to which I was not accustomed, it was no very agreeable 
recreation to be obliged to beat hominy, and to be up till 
after midnight preparing food for the next day, with the 
recollection too, that I was obliged to turn into the field 
with the first dawn of the morning. But this labor, severe 


28 


MEMOIRS OF 


as it was, had been in a manner,^ my own choice. In 
choosing it, I had escaped a worse tyranny and a more 
bitter servitude. I had avoided falling into the hands of 
master William. _ 

As I shall not have occasion to mention that amiable 
youth again, I may as well finish his history here. Some 
six or eight months after the death of his younger brother, 
be became involved in a drunken quarrel, at a cock-fight. 
This quarrel ended in a duel, and master William fell dead 
at the first fire. His death was a great stroke to colonel 
Moore, who seemed for a long time, almost inconsolable. 1 
did not lament him, either for his own sake or his father’s. 
I knew well, that in his death, I had escaped a cruel and 
vindictive master ; and I felt a stern and bitter pleasure in^ 
seeing the bereavements of a man who had dared to trample 
upon the sacred ties of nature. 


CHAPTER VI. 

I HiVD the same task with those who had been field 
hands all their lives ; but I was too proud to flinch or bom- 
plain. I exerted myself to the utmost, so that even ]\Ir 
Stubbs had no fault to find, but on the contrary, pronounced 
me, more than once, a “ right likely hand.” 

The cabin which I shared with Billy, had a very leaky 
roof ; and as the weather was rainy, we found it by no 
means comfortable. At length, we determined one day, to 
repair it ; and to get time to do so, we exerted ourselves to 
get through our tasks at an early hour. 

We had finished about four o’clock in the afternoon, and 
were returning together to the town ^ — ^for so we called the 
collection of cabins, in which the servants lived. Mr 
Stubbs met us, and having inquired if we had finished oui 
tasks, he muttered something about our not having half 
enough to do, and ordered us to go and Weed his garden. 
Billy submitted in silence, for he had been too long under 
Mr Stubbs’s jurisdiction, to think of questioning his com- 


A FUGITIVE. 


29 


mands. But I ventured to say, in as respectful a manner 
as I could, that as we had finished our regular tasks, it 
seemed very hard to give us this additional work. This 
put Mr Stubbs into a furious passion, and he swore twenty 
oaths, that I should both weed the garden and be whipped 
into the bargain. He sprang from his horse, and catching 
me by the collar of my shirt, the only dress I had on, he 
began to lay upon me with his whip. It was the first time, 
since I had ceased to be a child, that I had been exposed 
to this degrading torture. The pain was great enough ; the 
idea of being whipped was sufficiently bitter; but these 
were nothing in comparison with the sharp and burning 
sense of the insolent injustice that was done me. It was 
with the utmost difficulty, that I restrained myself fiom 
springing upon my brutal tormentor, and dashing him to the 
ground. But alas ! — I was a slave. What in a freeman, 
is a most justifiable act of self-defence, becomes in a slave, 
unpardonable insolence and rebellion. I griped my hands, 
set my teeth firmly together, and bore the injury the best I 
could. I was then turned into the garden, and the moon 
happening to be full, I was kept there weeding till near 
midnight. 

The next day was Sunday. The Sunday’s rest is the 
sole and single boon for which the American slave is in- 
debted to the religion of his master. That master, tramples 
under foot every other precept of the Gospel without the 
slightest hesitation, but so long as he does not compel his 
slaves to work on Sundays, he thinks himself well entitled 
to the name of a Christian. Perhaps he is so, — ^but if he is, 
a title so easily purchased can be worth but little. 

I resolved to avail myself of the Sunday’s leisure to 
complain to my master of the barbarous treatment I had 
experienced the day before, at the hands of Mr Stubbs. 
Colonel Moore received me with a coolness and distance, 
quite unusual in him, — for generally he had a smile for 
every body, especially for his slaves. However, he heard 
my story, and even condescended to declare that nothing 
gave him so much pain as to have his servants unnecessarily 
or unreasonably punished, and that he never would suffer 
such things to take place upon his plantation. He then 


30 


MEMOIRS OF 


bade me go about my business, having first assured me, 
that in the course of the day, he would see Mr Stubbs 
and inquire into the matter. This was the last I heard 
from colonel Moore. That same evening, Mr Stubbs seiit 
for me to his house, and having tied me to a tree before his 
door, gave me forty lashes, and bade me complain at the 
house again, if I dared. “ It’s a hard case ' indeed,” he 
added, “ if I can’t lick a cursed nigger’s insolence out of 
him, without being obliged to give an account of it ! ” 

Insolence 1 — the tyrant’s ready plea ! 

If a poor slave has been whipped and miserably abused, 
and no other apology for it can be thought of, the rascal’s 
‘insolence’ can be always pleaded, — and when pleaded, is 
enough in every slave-holder’s estimation, to excuse and 
justify any brutality. The slightest word, or look, or 
action, that seems to indicate the slave’s sense of any injus- 
tice that is done him, is denounced as insolence, and is 
punished with the most unrelenting severity. 

This was the second time I had experienced the disci- 
pline of the lash ; — but I did not find the second dose any 
more agreeable than tiie first. A blow is esteemed among 
freemen, the very highest of indignities ; and low as their 
oppressors have sunk them, it is esteemed an indignity 
among slaves. Besides — as strange as some people may 
think it — a twisted cowhide, laid on by the hand of a strong 
man, does actually inflict a good deal of pain, especially if 
every blow brings blood. 

I will leave it to the reader’s own feelings to imagine, 
what no words can sufficiently describe, the bitterness of 
that man’s misery, who is every hour in danger of experi- 
encing this indignity and this torture. When he has wrought 
up his fancy, — and let him thank God, from the very bottom 
of his heart, that in his case, it is only fancy, — ^to a lively 
idea of that misery, he will have taken the first step, tow- 
ards gaining some notion, however faint and inadequate, 
of what it is, to be a slave ! 

I had now learned a lesson, which ever}’’ slave early 
learns, — I found that I did not enjoy even the privilege of 
complaining ; and that the only way to escape a reiteration 
of injustice, was to submit in silence to the first infliction 


A FUGITIVE. 


31 


I did my best to swallow this bitter lesson, and to acquire a 
portion of that hypocritical humility, so necessary to a per- 
son in my unhappy condition. Humility, and whether it be 
real or pretended, they care but little, is esteemed by mas- 
ters, the great and crowning virtue of a slave ; for they 
understand by it, a disposition to submit, without resistance 
or complaint, to every possible wrong and indignity ; to 
reply to the most opprobrious and unjust accusatiori^ with a 
soft voice and a smiling face ; to take kicks, cuffs and 
blows as though they were favors ; to kiss the foot that 
treads you to the dust ! 

This sort of humility was a virtue, with w^hich, I must 
confess, nature had but scantily endowed me ; nor did I 
find it so easy as 1 might have desired, to strip myself of all 
the feelings of a man. It was like quitting the erect car- 
riage which I had received at God’s hand, and learning to 
crawl on the earth like a base reptile. This was indeed a 
hard lesson. But an American overseer is a stern teacher, 
and if I learned but slowly, it was not the fault of Mr 
Stubbs. 


CHAPTER VII. 

It would be irksome to myself, and tedious to the reader, 
to enter into a minute detail of all the miserable and monot- 
onous incidents that made up my life at this time. The 
last chapter is a specimen, from which it may be judged, 
w^hat sort of pleasures I enjoyed. They may be summed 
up in a few words ; and the single sentence which embraces 
this part of my history, might suffice to describe the whole 
lives of many thousand Americans. I was hard worked, ill 
fed, and well w'hipped. Mr Stubbs having once begun 
with me, did not suffer me to get over the effects of one 
flogging before he inflicted another ; and I have some marks 
of his about me, which I expect to carry to the grave. All 
this time he assured me, that what he did was only for my 
own good ; and he swore that he would never give over till 
he had lashed my cursed insolence out of me. 


32 


MEMOIRS OF 


The present began to grow intolerable ; — and what hope 
for the future has the slave ? I wished for death ; nor do 
I know to what desperate counsels I might have been 
driven, when one of those changes, to which a slave is ever 
exposed, but over which he can exercise no control, afford- 
ed me some temporary relief from my distresses. 

Colonel Moore, by the sudden death of a relation, be- 
came heir to a large property in South Carolina. But the 
person deceased had left a will, about which there was 
some dispute, which had every appearance of ending in a 
lawsuit. The matter required colonel Moore’s personal 
attention ; and he had lately set out for Charleston, and 
had taken with him several of the servants. One or two 
also had recently died ; and Mrs Moore, soon after her 
husband’s departure, sent for me to assist in filling up the 
gap which had been made in her domestic establishment. 

1 was truly happy at the change. I knew Mrs Moore 
to be a lady, who would never insult or trample on a ser- 
vant, even though he were a slave — unless she happened 
to be very much out of humor, an unfortunate occurrence, 
which in her case, did not happen oftener than once or 
twice a week — except indeed in the very warm weather, 
when the fit sometimes lasted the whole week through. 

Besides, I hoped that the recollection of my fond and 
faithful attachment to her younger son, who had always 
been her favorite, would secure me some kindness at her 
hands. Nor was I mistaken. The contrast of my new 
situation, with the tyranny of Mr Stubbs, gave it almost the 
color of happiness. I regained my cheerfulness, and my 
buoyant spirits. I was too wise, or rather this new influx 
of cheerfulness made me too thoughtless, to trouble myself 
about the future ; and satisfied with the temporary relief I 
experienced, I ceased to brood over the miseries of my con- 
dition. 

Aoout this time. Miss Caroline, colonel Moore’s eldest 
daughter, returned from Baltimore, where she bad been 
living for several years with an aunt, who superintended her 
education. She was but an ordinary girl, without much 
grace or beauty ; but her maid Cassy,* who had formerly 


* Cassandra. 


A FUGITIVE. 


33 


been my play-fellow, and who returned a woman, though 
she had left us a child, possessed a high degree of both. 

I learned from one of my fellow servants, that she was 
the daughter of colonel Moore, by a female slave, who for 
a year or two had shared her master’s favor jointly with my 
mother, but who had died many years since, leaving Gassy 
an infant. Her mother was said to have been a great 
beauty, and a very dangerous rival of mine. 

So far as regarded personal charms. Gassy was not 
unworthy of her parentage, either on the father’s or the 
mother’s side. She was not tall, but the grace and elegance 
of her figure could not be surpassed ; and the elastic \4vacity 
of all her movements afforded a model, which her indolent 
and languid mistress, who did nothing but loll all day upon 
a sofa, might have imitated with advantage. The clear 
soft olive of her complexion, brightening in either cheek to 
a rich red, was certainly more pleasing than the sickly, 
sallow hue, so common or rather so universal, among the 
patrician beauties of lower Virginia ; and she could boast a 
pair of eyes, which for brilliancy and expression, I have 
never seen surpassed. 

At this time, I prided myself upon my color, as much as 
any Virginian of them all ; and although I had found by a 
bitter experience, that a slave, whether white or black, is 
still a slave, and that the master, heedless of his victim’s 
complexion, handles the whip, with perfect impartiality ; — 
still, like my poor mother, I thought myself of a superior 
caste, and would have felt it a degradation, to put myself 
on a level with those a few shades darker than myself. 
This silly pride had kept me from forming intimacies with 
the other servants, either male or female ; for I was deci- 
dedly whiter than any of them. It had too, justly enough, 
exposed me to an ill will, of which I had more than once 
felt the consequences, but which had not yet wholly cured 
me of my folly. 

Gassy had perhaps more African blood than I ; but this 
was a point, however weighty and important I had at first 
esteemed it, which, as I became more acquainted with her, 
seemed continually of less consequence, and soon disap- 
peared entirely fronrmy thoughts. W e were much together ; 


34 


MEMOIRS OF 


and her beauty, vivacity, and good humor, made every day 
a stronger impression upon me. I found myself in love 
before I had thought of it ; and presently I discovered that 
my affection was not unrequited. 

Gassy was one of nature’s children, and she had never 
learned those arts of coquetry, often as skilfully practised by 
the maid as the mistress, by which courtships are protracted. 
We loved; and before long, we’ talked of marriage. Gassy 
consulted her mistress ; and the answer was favorable. 
Mrs Moore listened with equal readiness to me. Women 
are never happier, than when they have an opportunity to 
dabble ^in match-making ; nor does even the humble condi- 
tion of the parties quite deprive the business of its fasci- 
nation. 

It was determined that our marriage, should be a little 
festival among the servants. The coming Sunday was 
fixed on as the day ; and a Methodist clergyman, who 
happened to have wandered into the neighborhood, readily 
undertook to perform the ceremony. This part of his 
office, I suppose, he would have performed for any body ; 
but he undertook it the more readily for us, because Gassy 
while at Baltimore, had become a member of the Methodist 
Society. 

I was well pleased with all this ; for it seemed to give 
to our union something of that solemnity, which properly 
belonged to it. In general, mamage among American 
slaves, is treated as a matter of very little moment. It is a 
mere temporary union, contracted without ceremony, not 
recognized by the laws, little or not at all regarded by the 
masters, and of course, often but lightly esteemed by the 
parties. The recollection that the husband may, any day, 
be sold into Louisiana, and the wife into Georgia, holds out 
but a slight inducement to draw tight the bonds of connubial 
intercourse ; and the certainty that the fruits of their mar- 
nage, the children of their love, are to be bom slaves, 
and reared to all the privations and calamities of hopeless 
servitude, is enough to strike a damp into the hearts of the 
fondest couple. Slaves yield to the impulses of nature, 
and propagate a race of slaves ; but save in a few rare 
instances, servitude is as fatal to domestfc love as to all the 


A FUGITIVE. 


35 


other virtues. Some few choice spirits indeed, will still rise 
superior to their condition, and when cut off from every 
other support, will 6nd within their own hearts, the means 
of resisting the deadly and demoralizing influences of servi- 
tude. In the same manner, the baleful poison of the plague 
or yellow fever — innocent indeed and powerless in com- 
parison ! — while it rages through an infected city, and 
sweeps its thousands and tens of thousands to the grave, 
finds, here and there, an iron constitution, which defies its 
total malignity, and sustains itself by the sole aid of nature’s 
health-preserving power. 

On the Friday before the Sunday which had been fixed 
upon for our marriage, colonel Moore returned to Spring- 
Meadow. His arrival was unexpected; and by me, at 
least, very much unwished for. To the other servants who 
hastened to welcome him home, he spoke with his usual 
kindness and good nature; but though I had come for- 
ward with the rest, all the notice he took of me, was a 
single stare of dissatisfaction. He appeared to be surprised, 
and that too not agreeably, to see me again in the House. 

The next day, I was discharged from my duties of house 
servant, and put again under the control of Mr Stubbs. 
This touched me to the quick ; but it was nothing to what 
I felt the day following, when I went to the House to claim 
my bride. I was told that she was gone in the carnage 
with colonel Moore and his daughter, who had ridden out 
■ to call upon some of the neighbors ; and that I need not 
take the trouble of coming again to see her, for Miss Caro- 
line did not choose that her maid should marry a field hand. 

It is impossible for me to describe the paroxysm of grief 
and passion, which I now experienced. Those of the same 
ardent temperament with myself will easily conceive my 
feelings ; and to persons of a cooler temper, no description 
can convey an adequate idea. My promised wife snatched 
from me, and myself again exposed to the hateful tyranny 
of a brutal overseer ! — and all so sudden too — and with such 
studied marks of insult and oppression ! 

I now felt afresh the ill effects of my foolish pride in keeping 
myself separate and aloof from my fellow servants. Instead 
of sympathizing with me, many of them openly rejoiced at 


3G 


MEMOIRS OF 


my misfortune ; and as I had never made a confidant or 
associate among them, 1 had no friend whose advice to ask, 
or whose sympathy to seek. At length, I bethought my- 
self of te Methodist minister, who was to come that even- 
ing to marry us, and who had appeared to take a good deal 
of interest in the welfare of Gassy and myself. I was de- 
sirous not only of seeking such advice and consolation as 
he could afford me, but I wished to save the good man from 
a useless journey, and possibly from insult at Spring-^Meadow ; 
for colonel Moore looked on all sorts of preachers, and the 
Methodists especially, with an eye of very little favor. 

I knew that the clergyman in question, held a meeting, 
about five miles off ; and I resolved, if I could get leave, to 
go and hear him. I applied to Mr Stubbs for a pass, 
that is, a written permission, without which no slave can go 
off the plantation to which he belongs, except at the risk 
of being stopped by the first man he meets, horsewhipped, 
and sent home again. But Mr Stubbs swore that he was 
tired of such gadding, and he told me that he had made up 
his mind to grant no more passes for the next fortnight. 

To some sentimental persons, it may seem hard after the 
slave has labored six days for his master, and the blessed 
seventh at length gladdens him with its beams, that he can- 
not be allowed a little change of scene, but must still be 
confined to the hated fields, the daily witnesses of his toils 
and his sufferings. Yet many thrifty managers and good 
disciplinarians are, like Mr Stubbs, very much opposed to 
all gadding; and they pen up their slaves, when not at 
work, as they pen up their cattle, to keep them, as they 
say, out of mischief. 

At another time, this new piece of petty tyranny, might 
have provoked me ; but now, I scarcely regarded it, for my 
whole heart was absorbed by a greater passion. I was 
slowly returning towards the servants’ quarter, when a little 
girl, one of the house servants, came running to me, almost 
out of breath. I knew her to be one of Gassy’s favorites, 
and I caught her in my arms. As soon as she had recov- 
ered her breath, she said she had been looking for me all 
the morning, for she had a message from Gassy ; that Gassy 
had been obliged, much against her inclination, to go out 


A FUGITIVE. 


37 


that morning with her mistress, but that I must not be 
alarmed or down-hearted, for she loved me as well as ever. 

I kissed the little messenger, and thanked her a thousand 
times for her news. I then hastened to my house. It was 
quite a comfortable little cottage, which Mrs Moore had 
ordered to be built for Gassy and myself, but of which I 
expected every moment to be deprived. The news I had 
heard, excited new commotions in my bosom. I had no 
sooner sat down, than I found it impossible to keep quiet. 
My heart beat violently ; the fever in my blood grew high. 
I left the house and walked about, within the limits of 
my jail yard, — for so I might justly esteem the plantation ; 
I used the most violent exercise, and tried every means I 
could think of to subdue the powerful emotions of mixed 
hope and fear, with which I was agitated, and which I found 
more oppressive than even the certainty of misery. 

As evening drew on, I watched for the return of the 
carriage ; and at length, its distant rumbling caught my ear. 
I hastened towards the house, in the hope of seeing Gassy, 
and perhaps, of speaking with her. The carriage stopped 
at the door, and I was fast approaching it ; but at the in- 
stant, it occurred to me, that it would be better not to risk 
being seen by colonel Moore, who, I was now well satis- 
fied, entertained a decided hostility towards me, and whom 
I believed to be the author of the cruel repulse I had that 
morning met with. This thought stopped me, and I drew 
back and returned home, without catching a glimpse, or 
exchanging a word. 

I threw myself upon my bed ; but I turned continually 
from side to side, and found it impossible to compose my- 
self to rest. Hour after hour dragged on ; but I could not 
sleep. It was past midnight, when I heard a slight tap at 
the door, and a soft whisper, which thrilled through every 
nerve. I spmng up ; I opened the door ; I clasped her to 
my bosom. It was Gassy ; it was my betrothed wife. 

She told me, that since colonel IMoore’s return, every 
thing seemed changed at the House. Miss Garoline had 
told her, that colonel Moore had a very bad opinion of me, 
and was very much displeased to find, that during his ab- 
sence I had been agam employed as one of the house ser- 
4 


38 


MEMOIRS OF 


vants. She added, that when he was told of our intended 
marriage, he had declared that Gassy was too pretty a girl 
to be thrown away upon such a scoundrel,, and that he 
would undertake to provide her with a much better hus- 
band. So her mistress had bidden her to think no more of 
me ; but at the same time, had told her not to cry, for 
she would never leave off teasing her father, till he had ful- 
filled his promise ; “ and if you get a husband,” the young 
lady added, “ that you know is all that any of us want.” 
So thought the mistress ; the maid, I have reason to sup- 
pose, was rather more refined in her notions of matrimony. 

I was not quite certain how to interpret this conduct of 
colonel Moore’s. I was strongly inclined to consider it, 
only as a new out-break of that spite and hostility, which I 
had been experiencing ever since my useless and foolish 
appeal to his fatherly feelings. It occurred to me however 
as possible, that his opposition to our marriage might spring 
from other motives. Whatever I might imagine, 1 kept my 
own counsel. One motive which occurred to me, I could 
not tliink of myself, with the slightest patience ; and still 
less could I bear to shock and distress poor Gassy, by the 
mention of it. Another motive, which I thought might 
possibly have influenced colonel Moore, was less discredita- 
ble to him, and would have been flattering to the pride of 
both Gassy and myself. But this, I could not mention, with- 
out leading to disclosures, which I did not see fit to make. 

Gassy knew herself to be colonel Moore’s daughter ; but 
early in our acquaintance, I had discovered that she had no 
idea, that I was his son. I have every reason to believe, 
that Mrs Moore was perfectly well informed as to both 
these particulars ; for they were of that sort, which seldom 
or never escape the eagerness of female curiosity, and more 
especially, the curiosity of a^wife. 

Whatever she might know, she discovered in it no im- 
pediment to my marriage with Gassy. Nor did I ; for how 
could that same regard for the decencies of life — such is 
the soft phrase which justifies the most unnatural cruelty — 
that refused to acknowledge our paternity, or to recognize 
any relationship between us, pretend at the same time, and 
on the sole ground of relationship, to forbid our union ? 


A FUGITIVE. 


39 


But I knew that Gassy felt, rather than reasoned ; and 
though born and bred a slave, she possessed great delicacy 
of feeling. Besides, she was a Methodist, and though as 
cheerful and gay hearted a girl as I ever knew, she was 
very devout in all the observances of her religion. I feared 
to put our mutual happiness in jeopardy ; I was unwilling 
to harass Gassy, with what I esteemed unnecessary scru- 
ples. I had never told her the story of my parentage, and 
every day I grew less inclined to tell it. Accordingly I 
made no other answer to what she told me, except to say, 
that however little colonel Moore might like me, his dislike 
was not my fault. 

A momentary pause followed ; — pressed Gassy’s hand 
in mine, and in a faltering voice, I asked, what she intended 
to do. 

“ I am your wife ; — I will never be any body’s but 
yours,” was the answer. I clasped the dear girl to my 
heart. We knelt together,.and with upraised hands invoked 
the Deity to witness and confirm our union. It was the 
only sanction in our power ; and if twenty priests had said 
a benediction over us, would that have made our vows 
more binding, or our marriage more complete ? 


GHAPTER VIII. 

It was impossible for my wife to visit me except by 
stealth. She slept every night upon the carpet in her 
mistress’s room, — for a floor is esteemed in Ametica, a good 
enough bed for a slave, even for a favorite and a woman. 
She was liable to be called upon in the night, at the caprice 
of a mistress, who was in fact, a mere spoiled child ; and 
she could only visit me at the risk of a discovery, which 
might have been attended with very unpleasant conse- 
quences ; for if these clandestine visits had been detected, 
I fear that not all Gassy’s charms — ^whatever poets may 
have fabled of the power of beauty — could have saved her 
from the lash. 


40 


MEMOIRS UF 


Yet short and uncertain as these visits were, they sufficed 
to create and to sustain a new and singular state of feeling. 
My wife was seldom with me, but her image was ever 
before my eyes, and appeared to make me regardless of all 
beside. Things seemed to pass as in a happy dream. 
The labor of the field was nothing ; the lash of the over- 
seer was scarcely felt. My mind became so occupied and 
as it were, filled up, with the pleasure which I found in our 
mutual affection, and by the anticipated delights of each 
successive interview, that it seemed to have no room for 
disagreeable emotions. Strong' as was my passion, there 
was nothing in it, uneasy or unsatisfied. When I clasped 
the dear girl to my bosom, I seemed to have reached the 
height of human fruition. I was happy ; greater happi- 
ness I could not imagine, and did not desire. 

The intoxication of passion is the same in the slave and 
in the master ; it is exquisite ; and while it lasts, all-suffi- 
cient in itself. I found it so. With almost every thing to 
make me miserable, still was I happy, — for the excess of 
my passion rendered me insensible to any thing save its 
own indulgence. 

But such ecstasies are unsulted to the human constitu- 
tion. They are soon over, and perhaps are ever purchased 
at too dear a price ; for they are but too apt to be succeed- 
ed by all the anguish of disappointed hope, and all the 
bitterness of deep despair. Still I look back with pleasure 
to that time. It is one of the bright spots of my existence 
which eager memory discovers in her retrospections, scat- 
tered and scarcely visible, — ^tiny islets of delight, surrounded 
on all sides, by a gloomy and tempestuous ocean. 

We had been married about a fortnight. It was near 
midnight, and I was sitting before my door,, waiting for my 
wife to come. The moon was full and bright ; the sky 
was cloudless. I was still at the height and flood of my 
intoxication ; and as I watched the planet, and admired 
her brightness, I gave thanks to heaven that the base ten- 
dencies of a servile condition, had not yet totally extin- 
guished within me, all the higher and nobler emotions of 
man’s nature. 

Presently I observed a figure approaching. I should 


A FUGITIVE. 


41 


have known her at any distance, and I sprang forward and 
caught my wife in my arms. But as I pressed her to my 
heart, I felt her bosom to be strangely agitated j and when 
I brought her face to mine, my cheek was moistened with 
her tears. 

Alarmed at these unusual indications, I hurried her into 
the house, and hastily inquired the cause of her agitation. 
My inquiries appeared to increase it. She sunk her head 
upon my breast ; burst into sobs ; and seemed wholly 
incapable of speaking. I knew not what to think, or what 
to do. I exerted myself to compose her ; I kissed off the 
tears that trickled fast down her cheeks ; I pressed my 
hand against her beating heart, as if, in that way, I could 
have checked its palpitations. At length she grew more 
calm ; but it was by slow degrees, and in broken sen- 
tences, that I learned the origin of her terror. 

It seemed that colonel Moore, ever since his return, had 
distinguished her by particular kindness. He had made her 
several little presents ; had sought frequent occasions to talk 
with her, and was ever, half jocosely, complimenting her 
beauty. He had even dropped certain hints, which Gassy 
could not help understanding, but of which, she thought it 
best to take no notice. He was not to be repelled in that 
way ; but proceeded to words and actions, of which, it was 
not possible for her to affect to misunderstand the meaning. 
Her native modesty, her love for pie, her religious feelings, 
were all alarmed ; and the poor girl began to tremble at the 
fate that seemed to await her. But as yet, she kept her 
terrors to herself. She was reluctant to torture me with 
che story of insults, which however they might pierce my 
heart, I had no power to repel. 

That day, Mrs Moore and her daughter had gone to visit 
one of the neighbors, and Gassy was left at home. She 
was employed on some needle-work in her mistress’s room, 
when colonel Moore entered. She rose up hastily and 
would have gone away ; but he bade her stop and listen 
to what he had to say to her. He did not seem to notice 
her agitation, and appeared perfectly self-possessed himself. 
He told her that he had promised her mistress to provide 
her with a husband, in place of that scoundrel Archy ; that 
4 # 


42 


MEMOIRS OF 


he had looked about, but did not see any body who was 
worthy of her ; and, on the whole — he had concluded to 
taKe her himself. 

This he said with a tone of tenderness, which no doubt, 
he meant to be irresistible. To many women, in Cassy’s 
situation, it would have been so. They would have es- 
teemed themselves highly honored by their master’s notice, 
and would have felt not a little flattered, by the delicate 
terms under which he concealed the real character of his 
proposal. But she — poor child — ^heard him with shame 
and dread ; and was ready, she told me, to sink into the 
earth, with terror and dismay. In relating it, she blushed 
— she hesitated — she shuddered — ^her breathing became 
short and quick — she clung to me, as if some visible image 
of horror were present before her, and bringing her lips 
close to my ear, she exclaimed in a trembling and scarcely 
audible whisper — “ Oh Archy ! — and he my father ! ” 

Colonel Moore, she believed, could not have misunder- 
stood the feelings with which she listened to his offer. But 
if so, he disregarded them ; for he proceeded to enumerate 
all the advantages she would derive from this connexion, 
and strove to tempt her by promises of idleness and finery. 
She stood with her eyes upon the floor, and only answered 
him by sobs and tears, which she strove in vain to suppress. 
Upon this, colonel Moore in a tone of pique and displeas- 
ure, told her ‘‘ not to b^a fool and catching one of her 
hands in his, he threw his arai about her waist, and bade 
her not provoke him by a useless resistance. She uttered 
a scream of surprise and terror, and sunk at his feet. At 
that moment, the sound of the carriage wheels fell, she said, 
like heavenly music on her ear. Her master heard it too ; 
for he let go his grasp, and muttering something about 
another time, hastily left the room. She remained almost 
senseless on the floor, till the sound of her mistress’s footsteps 
in the passage, recalled her to herself. The rest of the 
afternoon and evening, she had passed, she hardly knew 
how. Her head, she told me, was dizzy; a cloud swam 
before her eyes ; and she had hardly been sensible of any 
thing but a painful feeling of languor and oppression. She 
had not dared to leave her mistress’s room ; and had wailed 


A FUGITIVE. 


43 


with impatience for the hour that would permit her to 
throw herself into the arms of her husband, her natural 
protector. 

Her natural protector! — alas, of what avail is the 
natural right of a husband to protect his wife against the 
assaults of a villain, who is at once her owner and his 1 

Such was Gassy ’s story ; and strange as it may seem, I 
heard it quite unmoved. Although I held the panting, 
trembling, weeping narrator in my arms, I listened to her 
story with far less emotion, than I have since experienced 
in recounting it. In truth, I was prepared for it ; I had 
anticipated it ; I expected it. 

I knew well that Gassy’s charms were too alluring not to 
excite a voluptuary in whom a long indulgence had extin- 
guished all the better feelings, and rendered incapable of 
controlling himself; and to whom, neither the fear of 
punishment, nor the dread of public indignation, supplied 
the place of conscience. What else could be reasonably 
expected of a man, who knew well, let him proceed to 
what extremities he might, not only that the law would 
justify him, but that any body who might think of calling 
him to account before the bar of public opinion, would be 
denounced by the public voice, as an impertinent intermed- 
dler in the affairs of other people ? 

Little of paternal tenderness as colonel Moore ever 
showed to me, at least from the moment that he found I 
knew him to be my father, I have too much of filial respect, 
to entertain the wish of misrepresenting him. Though he 
was of a warm and voluptuous temperament, he was 
naturally a good natured man ; and his honor was, as I have 
said, unquestioned. But honor is of a very diverse charac- 
ter. There is honor among gentlemen, and honor among 
thieves ; and though both these codes contain several 
excellent enactments, neither can fairly claim to be regard- 
ed as a perfect system of morality. Of that code in which 
he had been educated, colonel Moore was a strict observer. 
To have made an attempt on the chastity of a neighbor’s 
wife or daughter, he would have esteemed, and so the 
honorary code of Virginia esteems it, an offence of the 
blackest dye ; an offence, he well knew, to be expiated only 


44 


MEMOIRS OF 


by the offender’s life. But beyond this, he did not dream 
of prohibition or restraint. Hardened and emboldened by 
certain impunity, — provided the sufferer were a slave, — ^he 
regarded the most atrocious outrage that could be perpe- 
trated upon the person and feelings of a woman, rather as a 
matter of jest, a thing to be laughed at over the fourth bottle, 
than a subject of serious and sober reprehension. 

Of all this, I was well aware. I had from the first 
foreseen, that Gassy would be devoted by her master to the 
same purposes which had been fulfilled by my mother and 
her own. It was from these intentions, as I had all along 
believed, that his opposition to our marriage had originated. 
In imagining that it might spring from another cause, I had 
done him an honor to which — as was now too evident — he 
had not the slightest title, What I had just now heard, I 
had daily expected to hear. I had expected it ; yet such 
had been my intoxication, that even anticipations temble as 
this, had not been able to alarm or distress me ; and now 
that anticipation was changed into reality, still I remained 
unmoved. The ecstasy of passion still sustained me ; and 
as I pressed my wretched, trembling wife to my bosom, I 
still rose superior to the calamity that assailed me ; even 
yet, I was happy. 

This seems incredible T — 

Love then as I did ; or if that suit your temperament 
better, hate with the same intensity with which I loved. Be 
absorbed in any passion, and while the fit continues, you will 
find yourself endowed with a surprising and almost super- 
human energy. 

My mind was already made up. The unhappy slave 
has but one way of escaping any threatening infliction ; a 
poor and wretched resource, to which he recurs always at the 
imminent risk of redoubling his miseries. That remedy is 
flight. 

Our preparations were soon made. My wife returned 
to the House, and gathered up a little bundle of clothing. 
In the mean time, I employed myself in collecting such 
provisions as I could readiest lay my hands on. A "couple 
of blankets, a hatchet, a little kettle, and a few other small 
articles, completed my equipments ; and by the time my 


A FUGITIVE. 


45 


wife returned, I was ready for a start. We set out, with no 
other companion,' but a faithful dog. I did not wish to take 
him, for fear that some how or other, he might lead to our 
detection ; but he would ^ot be driven back, and I was 
afraid to tie him, lest his bowlings might give an alarm, and 
lead to an immediate pursuit. 

Lower Virginia had already begun to feel the effects of 
that blight, which has since lighted so heavily upon her, 
and which in truth, she has so well deserved. Already her 
fields were beginning to be deserted ; already impenetrable 
thickets had commenced to cover plantations, which, had 
the soil been cultivated by freemen, might still have pro- 
duced a rich and abundant harvest. There was a deserted 
plantation about ten miles from Spring-Meadow. I had 
formerly visited it several times, in company with my young 
master, James, who, when he was well enough to ride about, 
had a strange taste for wandering into out-of-the-way places. 
It was thither that, in the hurry of the moment, I resolved 
to go. 

The by-road which had formerly led to this estate, 
and the fields on both sides, were grown over with small 
scrubby pines, so close and tangled as to render the thicket 
almost impenetrable. I contrived however, to keep on in the 
right direction. But the difficulties of the way were so 
great, that the morning had dawned before we reached the 
plantation buildings. They were still standing ; but in a 
most dilapidated condition. The great House had been a 
structure of large size, and considerable pretensions. But 
the windows were gone, the doors had dropped from their 
hinges, and the roof was partly fallen in. The court yard 
was completely grown up with young trees. Wild vines 
were creeping over the house ; — and all was silent, desolate 
and deserted. The stables, and what had been the 
servants’ quarter, were mere heaps of ruins, overgrown with 
weeds and grass. 

At some distance behind the house, there was a rapid 
descent, which formed one side of a deep ravine ; and near 
the bottom of this hollow, a fine bubbling spring burst from 
under the hill. It was now half choked with leaves and 
sand, but its waters were pure and cool as ever. Near the 


46 


MEMOIRS OF 


spring, was a little low building of brick, which perhaps had 
been intended for a dairy, or some such purpose. The door 
M as gone, and half the roof had tumbled in. The other 
half still kept its position, and fhe vacancy occasioned by 
the part that had fallen, served M^ell enough to admit the 
light and air, and to supply the place of windows, which 
had formed no part of the original construction. This 
ruinous little building was shaded by several large and 
ancient trees ; and was so completely hidden by a more 
recent growth, as to be invisible at the distance of a few 
paces. It was by mere accident that we stumbled upon it, 
as we were searching for the spring, of which I had drank 
upon my former visits, but the situation of which, I did not 
exactly recollect. It struck us at once, that this was the 
place for our temporary habitation ; and we resolved forth- 
with to clear it of the rubbish it contained, and to turn it 
into a dwelling. 


CHAPTER IX. 

I KNEW that the place where we now were, was very 
seldom visited by any body. The deserted house had the 
reputation of being haunted ; and this, as well as its seclu- 
sion from the road, and the almost impenetrable thickets by 
which it was sun’ounded, would serve to protect us against 
intruders. There were several plantations about it ; for it 
occupied the highest ground between two rivers, which 
flowed at no great distance apart, and of which the low 
grounds were still in cultivation. But there were no culti- 
vated fields nearer than four or five miles ; and no houses 
nearer than Spring-Meadow, which, I have said, was some 
ten or twelve miles distant. I judged that for the present, 
we might remain secure in this retreat ; and it seemed our 
best policy to suffer the search for us to be pretty well over, 
before we attempted to continue our flight. 

In the mean time, we exerted ourselves to make things 
as comfortable as possible. It was the height of summer ; 


A FUGITIVE. 


47 


and we anticipated but little inconvenience from the open- 
ness of our habitation. A heap of pine straw, in one comer 
of our ruinous hovel, formed our bed ; and sweeter slumbers, 
not down itself could have ensured. Out of such materials 
as the wainscoting of the deserted house supplied, I made 
two rude stools, and something that served for a table. 
The spring furnished us with water ; our principal concern 
was, to provide ourselves with food. The woods and thick- 
ets produced some wild fruits ; and the peach-orchard near 
the house, though choked and shaded by a more recent 
growth, still continued to bear. I was an adept in the art 
of snaring rabbits, and such other small game as the woods 
supplied. The spring which furnished us with water, was 
one of the heads of a little branch or brook which dis- 
charged, at a short distance, into a larger stream. In that 
stream there were fish. But our chief resource was in the 
neighboring corn-fields, which already furnished roasting 
ears, and from which I did not scmple to draw a plentiful 
supply. 

On the whole, — though we were both quite unaccus- 
tomed to so wild a livelihood, — we passed our time very 
agreeably. Those who are always idle can never know 
the true luxury of idleness, the real pleasure with which he 
who has been pushed to work against his will, relaxes his 
strained muscles, and delivers himself up to the delight of 
doing nothing. I used to lie for hours, in a dreamy sort of 
indolence, outstretched upon the shady slope, enjoying the 
sweet consciousness of being my own master, and luxuria- 
ting in the idea that I need come or go at no one’s bidding, 
but might work or be idle as suited my own good will. No 
wonder that emancipated slaves are inclined to indolence. 

It is to them a new pleasure. Labor, in their minds, is in- 
dissolubly associated with servitude and the whip ; and not ^ 
to work, they have ever been taught to look upon as the 
badge and peculiar distinction of freedom. 

The present was passing pleasantly enough ; but it was 
necessary to be thinking about the future. We had always 
regarded our present place of refuge as temporary only ; 
and it was now time to think of leaving it. I should have 
esteemed it delightful indeed, to pass a whole life of solitude 
and seclusion with Gassy, where, if we had lacked the 


48 


MEMOIRS OF 


pleasures of society, we might have escaped its ten-fold 
greater ills. But this was not possible. The American 
climate was never meant for hermits. Our present station 
would answer well enough for a summer retreat ; but the 
winter would render it untenable ; and before long, winter 
would be approaching. Our hope was to escape into the 
free states, — ^for I knew that north of Virginia there was a 
country where there were no slaves. If we could once get 
away from the neighborhood of Spring-Meadow, where I 
was well known, we should enjoy one great advantage du- 
ring the remainder of our flight. Our complexions would 
not betray our servile condition ; and we should find no 
great difficulty, we thought, in passing ourselves as free 
citizens of Virginia. Colonel Moore had, no doubt, filled 
the country round, with advertisements, in which our per- 
sons were accurately described, and every peculiarity of 
each of us carefully noted. It was therefore necessary to 
use great caution ; and I considered it essential to our escape 
that Gassy should adopt some disguise. What this should 
be, or where we should get it, was now the question. 

We finally determined to assume the character of persons 
travelling to the north to seek our fortunes ; and we arranged 
that Gassy should adopt a man’s dress, and accompany me 
in the character of a younger brother. The night on which 
we had left Spring-Meadow, I had brought away my best 
suit, one of the last gifts of poor master James, and such 
as would well enough enable me to play the part of a trav- 
elling Virginian. But I had neither hat nor shoes; nor 
any clothes whatever, that could properly serve as a dis- 
guise for Gassy. 

Luckily I had a small sum, the accumulated savings of 
master James’s liberality, which I had always kept in re- 
serve, in the hope and expectation that I should sometime 
have a use for it. This money, I had been careful to take 
with me ; and it was now our sole reliance not only for the 
expenses of the road, but for procuring the means, without 
which we could not start at all. 

But though we had the money, how could we make any 
use of it, without running a very serious risk of detection ? 

There lived, about five or six miles from Spring-Meadow, 
and near the same distance from us, one Mr James Gordon. 


A FUGITIVE. 


49 


He kept a little store ; and his principal customers were 
the slaves of the neighboring plantations. Mr James Gor- 
don, or Jemmy Gordon, as he was familiarly called, was 
otie of those poor white men, of whom the number in lower 
Virginia, is, or was very considerable, and who are spoken 
of, even by the slaves themselves, with a sort of contempt. 
He had neither lands nor servants; for his father before 
him, had been a poor white man. He had been educated 
to no trade ; for where' every planter has his own mechan- 
ics on his own plantation, a free workman can expect no 
encouragement. The only resource for a man in Jemmy 
Gordon’s situation, is to find employment as an overseer for 
some of his richer neighbors. But in Virginia, there are 
more persons who desire to be overseers than there are 
plantations to oversee. Besides, Mr Gordon was one of 
those careless, easy, good natured, indolent sort of men, 
who are generally pronounced good-for-nothing. JJe never 
could bring himself to that ever watchful scrutiny and as- 
siduous oversight, which is so necessary among slaves, whose 
maxim it is to work as little as possible, and to plunder all 
they can. He was apt enough to get into a passion, and 
cut and slash, right and left, without discrimination ; but he 
was incapable of that regular severity, and systematic cru- 
elty, by which other overseers gained the reputation of ex- 
cellent disciplinarians. Moreover, on a certain plantation 
of which he had been the manager, some large vacancies 
had occurred in the corn-crib, which were never very clear- 
ly accounted for. How far this was occasioned by negli- 
gence, or how far by dishonesty, was never, so far as I 
know, satisfactorily determined. All I can say is, that Mr 
Gordon was dismissed from his employment, and found it so 
difficult to get a new situation, that he gave up the search in 
despair, and resolved to turn trader. He had nothing to be- 
gin upon ; and of course, traded in a very small way. He 
dealt principally in whiskey, but in addition, kept shoes, and 
such articles of clothing as slaves are in the habit of purchas- 
ing to eke out the miserable and insufficient supply, which 
they receive from their masters. He took money in pay 
ment, but likewise corn and other produce — without any 
strict inquiry how his customers came into possession of it. 


50 


MEMOIRS OF 


It is this class of men against whom the legislators of Vir- 
ginia have exercised all their ingenuity in the construction 
of penal statutes ; and against whom, they have exerted all 
the severity which they have dared to use towards men, 
who might still claim »the title and demand the rights of 
‘free white citizens.’ But these penal enactments, have 
failed, in a great measure, of their object. Though the 
trade with slaves is dangerous and disgraceful, and the 
traders, in consequence, are desperate and reckless, their 
number is still so great as to furnish the planters with an 
inexhaustible topic of declamation and complaint, — and to 
supply the slaves with numerous little comforts and luxuries 
which they might in vain have expected from the indul- 
gence or humanity of their masters. 

These traders are, no doubt, the receivers of plunder ; 
and no small proportion of what they sell is paid for in that 
way. It is in vain, that tyranny fences itself about with 
the terrors' of the law. It is in vain, that the slave-liolder 
flatters himself with the hope of appropriating to his own 
sole use, the entire fruits of the forced labors of his fellow 
men. The slave cannot resist the compulsion, with which 
the law has armed the hand of his master. The lash is an 
ensign of authority and of torture, to which the stoutest 
heart, and the most stubborn will, is soon compelled to yield. 
But fraud is the natural counterpart to tyranny ; and cun- 
ning is ever the defence of the weak against the oppressions 
of the strong. Can the unhappy slave, who has been com- 
pelled to plant in the day time for his master’s benefit, be 
blamed if he strives in the night to gatlier some gleaning 
of the crop, for his own use ? 

Blame him you who can ! Join, if you will, in the 
clamor of the master against the cursed knavery of his 
slaves ! That same master, who thinks it no wrong to rob 
those slaves of their labor, their sole possession, their only 
property ! He to talk about theft ! — ^he — the slave-holder 
— ^who has carried the art of pillage to a perfection of which 
robbers and pirates never dreamed ! They are content to 
snatch such casual spoils as chance may offer; but the 
slave-holder — whip in hand — extorts from his victims, a 
large, a regular, an annual plunder ! Nay more ; he sells 


A FUGITIVE. 


51 


for money, he has inherited from his father, and he hopes 
to transmit to his children, the privilege of continuing this 
systematic pillage ! 

1 had once saved Mr Gordon’s life, and for this piece of 
service he had always expressed the greatest gratitude. 
This had happened several years before. He was fishing 
on the river not far from Spring-Meadow, when a sudden 
squall upset his boat. It was no great distance from the 
shore, but Mr Gordon was no swimmer, and was in the 
greatest danger. Master James and myself happened to 
be walking along the bank. We saw a ilian struggling in 
the water, and I plunged in after him, and caught him as 
he was sinking the third time. This service, Mr Gordon 
was in the habit of acknowledging by occasional little pres- 
ents ; and I flattered myself with the hope that he would 
not refuse his aid in my present circumstances. My plan 
was, to get from Mr Gordon, a hat and shoes for myself, a 
man’s dress for Gassy, and such information as he could 
give us about the route we ought to follow. A great many 
difficulties presented themselves to my mind in the prose- 
cution of the journey. I resolved however not to afflict 
myself with borrowed trouble, but to leave the future to 
take care of itself. 

The first thing was, to see Mr Gordon and find out how 
far he was disposed to assist me. His house and store — 
both under the same roof — were in a lonely part of the 
country, near the crossing of two roads, and out of sight of 
any other buildings. I did not think it safe to trust myself 
upon the high-way earlier than midnight ; and it was con- 
siderably past that hour before I approached Mr Gordon’s 
house. When I came within sight of it, I hesitated, and 
more than once, came to a halt. I did not like to trust my 
liberty and all my hopes of happiness, to the unsure guar- 
dianship of any man’s gratitude, and least of all, such a man 
as IMr Gordon. The risk seemed too great ; and my 
heart sunk within me, when I called to mind how frail was 
the prop on which depended, if not my life, every thing 
certainly that made life desirable. 

I was on the point of turning back ; but I recollected 
that this was my only resource. Mr Gordon must help us 


52 


MEMOIRS OF 


to escape, or our chance was worth nothing. This thought 
pushed me on. I plucked up courage and approached the 
door. Three or four dogs which kept watch about the 
house, immediately opened in full chorus ; but though they 
barked loud enough, they gave no signs of any intention to 
attack me. I knocked again ; — and pretty soon, Mr Gor- 
don thrust his head from the window, bade his dogs be 
quiet, and inquired who I was, and what I wanted. I 
begged him to open the door and let me in, for I had busi- 
ness with him. Expecting perhaps, to drive a profitable 
trade with some midnight customer, he hastened to do as I 
had requested. He opened the door ; the moon-light, as I 
entered, fell upon my face, and he recognized me at once. 

‘‘ What ! Archy, is it you,” — and he spoke it with an 
air of the greatest surprise — “ where, in the devil’s name, 
did you spring from ? — I hoped you were clear out of the 
neighborhood a month ago,” — and with these words he 
drew me into the house and shut the door. 

I told him, that I had a place of concealment near by, 
and that I had come to get a little assistance from him in 
making my escape. 

“ Any thing in reason, Archy ; but if I were caught 
helping off a runaway, it would ruin me forever. There’s 
colonel Moore, your master, and major Pringle, and captain 
Knight, and a half dozen more, were over here, it’s only 
yesterday, and they swore if I did not leave off trading with 
the hands, they’d pull my house down about my ears, and 
ride me on a rail out of the county ; — and now if I were 
caught helping you, fact, Archy, ’twould do my busi- 
ness for me with a witness. I’m not quite such a fool as 
all that.” 

I used tears, and flatteries, and entreaties. I reminded 
Mr Gordon how often he had wished for an opportunity to 
serve me ; I told him that all I wanted was a few articles 
of dress, and some directions about the road I ought to 
follow. 

True, Archy, true ; — You saved my life, boy ; — I 
can’t deny it ; — and one good turn deserves another. But 
this business of yours is an ugly, ba^l business, at the best. 
What, the devil, must you and that wench be running away 


A FUGITIVE. 


53 


for ? I never knew any mischief in my life, that a woman 
was^nt at the bottom of it. It’s that tattling babbler, widow 
Hinkley, that brought colonel Moore and the rest of ’em 
over here yesterday ; — curse the envious old jade, she 
wants to drive me out of the neighborhood, and get all the 
custom for herself.” 

I knew that Mr Gordon had no turn for sentiment, and 
that it would be casting pearls before swine’s feet to waste 
any upon him. So I told him it was too late to talk about 
our reasons for running away, — run away we had, — and the 
only thing now was, to avoid being taken. 

“ Ay, ay, boy, I understand you. It’s a damned silly 
business, and you begin to be ashamed of it already. You 
had better make up your minds now to go in, take your 
whippings, and make the best of it. It’s the loss of the 
wench that colonel Moore is most angry about ; and I dare 
say, if you were to go in, Archy, and make a merit of tell- 
ing where he could find her, you might get off mighty easy, 
and shift all the blame upon her shoulders.” 

I concealed the indignation which this base proposal 
excited. Such treachery to one another is too common 
among slaves, and is always promoted and rewarded by the 
masters. I could not expect Mr Gordon to rise very far 
above the level of current morals. So I passed by his 
proposal in silence. I only said, that I had made up my 
mind to undergo any thing rather than return to Spring- 
Meadow. If he was resolved not to assist me, I would be 
off, as soon as possible, trusting to his honor, to say nothing 
about this visit. As a last resource, I hinted that I had the 
money to pay for all I wanted, and that I should not dispute 
about the price. 

Whether it was this last hint, or some more generous 
motive, or the combined effect of both, I shall not undertake 
to determine ; but certain it is, that Mr Gordon began to 
exhibit a more favorable disposition. 

As to money, Archy, between friends like fis, there is 
no need of speaking about that. And if you will have 
your own way, considering what has happened between us, 
’twould be mighty unkind in me not to let you have the 
things you’re wanting^ But you’ll never get off — ^mind 


54 


MEMOIRS OF 


now what I tell you — ^you’ll never get off. Why, hoy, the 
colonel swears he’ll spend five thousand dollars but what 
he’ll catch you. He’s got printed handbills stuck up all 
through the country, with Five Hundred Dollars Reward, 
at the head of ’em. Come into the store here, and I’ll 
show you one. Five hundred dollars ! — ^somebody is to 
pocket that money, I reckon.” 

I did not like the tone in which this was spoken. The 
emphasis with which Mr Gordon dwelt on the five hundred 
dollars, was rather alarming. The idea of this reward was 
evidently taking strong hold upon his imagination. 

Mr Gordon’s establishment consisted of but two rooms, of 
which, one was his parlor, bed-room and kitchen, and the 
other his store. All this time we had been in the bed-room, 
with no light but that of the moon. I now followed him 
into the store. He struck a light, kindled a piece of light 
wood, and holding it up to a large handbill posted opposite 
the door, I read, to the best of my recollection, pretty much 
as follows ; 


“five hundred dollars reward. 

Ran away from the subscriber, at Spring-Meadow, on 
Saturday evening last, two servants, Archy and Gassy, for 
whose apprehension the above reward will be paid. 

They are both very light colored. Of the two. Gassy is 
a shade the darker. Archy is about twenty-one years of 
age, five feet eleven inches high, and a stout muscular 
frame. He has a firm erect walk, and is a very likely 
fellow. Smiles when spoken to. His hair is a light brown, 
and curls over his head ; he has blue eyes and a high fore- 
head. Said boy was raised in my family, and has always 
been kindly treated. It is not known what clothes he 
wore away. 

Gassy is about eighteen, five feet three inches, or there- 
.abouts, and a handsome face and figure. She has long 
dark hair, and a bright black eye. When she smiles there 
is a dimple in her left cheek. She has a good voice, and 
can sing several songs. No other marks particularly recol- 
lected, except a mole on her right breast. She has been 
raised a lady’s maid, and she took a variety of good cloth- 


A FUGITIVE. 


55 


ing with her. Said slaves have gone off in company as is 
supposed. 

Whoever will return them to me, or lodge them in any 
jail, so that I can get them, shall be paid the above 
reward ; or one half for either separately. 

Charles Moore. 

N. B. I suspect they have taken the road to Baltimore, 
as Gassy formerly lived in that city. No doubt they will 
attempt to pass for white people.” 

While I was reading this advertisement, Mr Gordon 
looked over my shoulder, and added his comments upon 
each sentence of it. Neither his remarks, nor the adver- 
tisement itself, were calculated to make me feel very com- 
fortably. Perhaps Mr Gordon observed it ; for he handed 
me a glass of whiskey, and bade me keep up my spirits. 
He swallowed one himself; and drank to my escape. This 
reassured me a little, — for to tell the truth, I was a good 
deal startled at Mr Gordon’s very evident hankering after 
the five hundred dollars. The whiskey he drank, — and he 
was not content with a single glass, — seemed to rekindle 
his gratitude. He swore he would run any risk to serve 
me, and told me to pick out such articles as I wanted. 

I fitted myself with hat and shoes, and selected the same 
for Gassy. But it was necessary to have a man’s dress for 
her. Mr Gordon did not deal in ready made clothing, but 
he had some cloth, which I thought, would answer our 
purpose ; and he undertook to get the suit made up for me. 
I gave liim the measure by guess, and was to return in 
three days, by which time he promised to have the clothes 
finished. I had much rather have completed the business 
at once, and have started directly on our journey ; but 
that was impossible. A disguise for Gassy was absolutely 
necessary; it would have been foolish to have attempted 
an escape without it. I pressed him to be sure and have 
the clothes finished, at the time appointed ; for a reward of 
five hundred dollars, and the chance of making friends with 
colonel Moore, and rising in the world by his assistance, 
was a temptation to which I wished to keep Mr Gordon 
exposed, for as short a time as possible. I now inquired 


56 


MEMOIRS OF 


what I had to pay for my various purchases. IMr Gordon 
took his slate and began to figure it up. He proceeded 
very diligently for a few minutes, and then suddenly came 
to a full stop. He looked at the goods 1 had selected, 
and then at the slate. For a moment he hesitated ; then 
looking at me, “ Archy,” he said, “ you saved my life, — 
you’re welcome to them ’ere things. 

I knew well how to value this instance of generosit}^ 
Whatever money Mr Gordon got, was pretty sure to go in 
gambling and dissipation. Of course he was not only poor, 
but often distressed and tormented to get the means of 
indulging his propensities. Money was to him, what whis- 
key is to the lips of the drunkard. For such a person to 
be generous, is hard indeed ; and I ceased at once, to 
distrust a man, who gave so substantial a proof of his 
inclination to assist me. I bade him good night, and .set 
out on my return home, with a heart much lightened. 

Mr Gordon put me some questions about the place of 
my retreat, to which however I thought it best to return a 
somewhat equivocal reply. Though greatly reassured, I 
still could see no good purpose to be answered by too great 
confidence ; and at setting out from Mr Gordon’s, I was 
careful to take a direction quite wide of the true one. 
Once or twice, I thought I was followed. The moon was 
now setting, and her light was scanty and uncertain. My 
path led through a scattered growth of stunted trees and 
bushes. A puisuer might easily have concealed himself ; 
but when I stopped to listen, all was silent ; and I soon 
dismissed my fanciful fears. 

Taking a considerable circuit, I struck into the direction 
of the deserted plantation, and arrived there about day- 
break. Gassy came out to meet me. It was the first 
time we had been so long separated since our escape from 
Spring-Meadow. I felt as overjoyed to see her, as if I bad 
returned after a year’s absence ; and .the eagerness with 
which she flew into my arms, and pressed me again and 
again to her bosom, satisfied me that I was not alone in the 
feeling. We spent the three days in making preparations, 
starting and answering difficulties, and sometimes in pleasing 
ourselves with anticipations of future happiness. 


A FUGITIVE. 


57 


At the appointed time I set off for Mr Gordon’s. I 
approached the house, not trembling and hesitating as 
before, but with the confident step with which one hastens 
to the dwelling of a tried friend. I knocked. In a moment 
Mr Gordon opened the door ; he caught me by the arm, 
and would have dAwn me into the house ; but the door 
half opened enabled me to discover that there were others 
there, beside himself. 

I snatched myself from his grasp, and starting back, I 
said in a whisper, “ Heavens ! Mr Gordon, who have you 
in the house ? ” 

He returned me no answer ; but almost while I spoke, I 
heard Stubbs’s grum voice growling, Seize him, seize him 
— and that moment I knew I was betrayed. I ran ; but 
very soon I felt somebody grasping at my shoulder. Luckily 
I had a thick stout stick in my hand, and turning short 
about, with one blow I struck my pursuer to the ground. 
It was the traitor Gordon. I was tempted to stop and 
renew the blow, but that moment, a pistol ball whizzed by 
my head, and looking round, I saw Stubbs and another man, 
with pistols in their hands, close upon me. There was no 
time to lose. I sprang forward, and ran for my life. Two 
or three shots were fired in quick succession, but without 
effect ; and presently I reached a thicket, where I felt 
myself more safe. It was soon evident that I was much 
the fleetest of the party ; for before long, I was out of sight 
and hearing of my pursuers. I kept on for near half an 
hour ; when, almost exhausted, I sunk upon the ground, and 
strove to recover my breath and to collect my thoughts. 
There was no moon ; the starlight was obscured by a thin 
mist ; and I did not well know where I was. Having deter- 
mined, as well as I was able, the probable direction of the 
deserted plantation, I again set forward. In the race, I had 
sprained one of my ankles. This I had scarcely observed, 
at the moment ; but it now became painful, and I moved 
with difficulty. However, I kept on the best I could, and 
flattered myself with the hope of getting back before day- 
light. I passed, for a considerable distance, through fields 
and thickets, with which I was not acquainted ; but 
presently, 1 reached a brook which I knew. I quenched 


58 


MEMOIRS OF 


my thirst, and pushed forward with greater alacrity. I was 
still five or six miles from the deserted plantation, and was 
obliged to take a veiy circuitous route. I kept on as fast 
as I was able ; but the sun was up some hours, before I 
arrived at the spring. Gassy was anxiously watching for 
me. She had become exceedingly alarmed at my delay ; 
nor did the disorder of my dress, and my appearance of 
hurry and fatigue tend to reassure her. 

I hastened towards the spring, and was stooping to drink, 
when Gassy gave a loud shriek. I looked up, and saw two 
or three men rushing down the side of the hollow. I 
sprang upon my feet; but immediately felt myself seized 
from behind. Two other men had rushed down the hollow, 
upon the other side, and while I was preparing to give bat- 
tle to those I had first seen, before I was aware of my 
danger, I found myself in the grasp of their confederates. 


GHAPTER X. 

I LEARNED afterwards, that when Mr Stubbs and his 
companions, who were waiting for me at Gordon’s, had 
failed to bring me down with their pistols, discovering that 
I ran too fast for them, they soon gave over the chase and 
returned to the store. They sent off immediately for assist- 
ance; and were presently joined by two men, and what 
was of more importance, by a dog, named Jowler, and 
celebrated throughout the county for his skill in tracking out 
runaways. 

Jowler had no sooner arrived, than they tied a string 
about his neck, the other end of which, one of the party 
held in his hand. The dog was then put upon my trail, and 
trotted slowly forward with his nose to the ground, followed 
by Mr Stubbs and the rest of the party. All the latter 
part of the way, I had walked quite slowly, and Jowler, 
and his company had gained so fast upon me, that they 
reached the spring almost as soon as I did. Having dis- 
covered my retreat, they resolved to make every thing 


A FUGITIVE. 


59 


certain ; and dividing into two parties, they rushed down 
both sides of the hollow at the same time, and secured me 
in the manner I have related. 

Poor Gassy was seized at the same instant ; and almost 
before we knew what had happened, we found our hands 
tied, and ourselves connected by a stout chain, the ends of 
which were made fast about our necks. This was sad 
business for Gassy ; and the poor girl, when she felt the 
iron around her neck, wept bitterly. I do not believe the 
chain was drawn much tighter than was necessary ; yet 
when 1 saw the tears of my poor wife, I could not help 
feeling a choking sensation about my throat. What aggra- 
vated my distress and my indignation, was the brutal jests 
of our captors. It was well my hands were fast, for had 
they been free, I verily believe I should have found the 
means to finish one or another of the scoundrels. Mr Gor- 
don was one of the party. His head was bound up in a 
bloody handkerchief ; but instead of joining in the jests of 
his companions, he tried to keep them from vexing and in- 
sulting us. 

‘‘ I’ll tell you what Stubbs, you nasty infernal black- 
guard, let that gal Gassy be. Ain’t it I who’ve taken 
them ? Ain’t it I who am to have the reward ? Let them 
be I say ; I tell you they are under my protection.” 

“ Indeed ! a fine sort of protector they’ve found in you,” 
answered Stubbs, with a loud laugh, in which he was 
joined by his companions, — No question, they’re mightily 
obliged to you. The deuce take your nonsense and your- 
self into the bargain ; I’ll say what I please to the gal, and 
do what I please too. Ain’t I the overseer?” — and here 
he broke out with a fresh string of ribaldry, addressed to 
poor Gassy. 

It was only by a promise to treat his companions to a 
quart of whiskey, that Mr Gordon could prevail on them to 
let us alone. The word ‘ whiskey’ worked like a charm, 
and by the influence of it, he persuaded the others to drop 
a little behind, and to give him a chance, as he expressed 
it, to have some private conversation with me. He had no 
objection to their hearing what he said to me, but he did 
not want to be interrupted. 


60 


MEMOIRS OF 


I was a good deal surprised at all this. Mr Gordon had 
betrayed me ; — and after doing me so base and irreparable 
an injury, what could he mean by these little marks of good 
will ? Mr Gordon was, as I have described him, a good 
natured fellow. He had not been able to resist the tempta- 
tion of five hundred 'dollars, and all the other advantages, 
which he expected to gain by betraying me ; — but for all 
that, he had not forgotten that I had saved his life. He 
walked up beside me, and stammering and hesitating, he 
attempted to enter into conversation. 

“That was ^ deuced hard blow you struck me,Archy,” 
he began. 

“ I am sorry it was not harder,” was my answer. 

“ Come, come now, don’t be in such a devilish savage 
humor. Why, boy, I thought I might as well get the five 
hundred dollars, as to let it slip through my fingers, and all 
for nothing too. I knew right well, you were sure to be 
taken, — and for all you pout so about it. I’ve made better 
terms for you, than any body else would have done. Come, 
boy, cheer up, and I’ll tell you how it all was. You see, 
when you left me t’other night, I could not sleep a wink 
for thinking. Says I to myself, that’s a damned foolish 
project of Archy’s. He is sure to be caught ; and then it 
will be coming out as how I helped him, and then there 
will be the devil and all to pay. He’ll be whipped, and 
I’ll be fined and sent to jail, and for any thing I know, 
ridden on a rail out of the county, as colonel Moore and 
them others threatened me ; and then, — to make a bad 
matter worse, — ^somebody else will get the reward. Now 
that boy Archy, said I, saved my life — there’s no denying 
that, any how, — and if I can save him a whipping, and at 
the same time, put five hundred dollars into my pocket, it 
will be a mighty pretty business for both of us. 

“ So the next morning, I got up early and started ofF for 
colonel Moore’s ; and a mighty fluster I found the colonel 
in, to be sure, — for he could hear no news of you nowhere. 
So says I, colonel, says I, I hear as how you’ve offered 
five hundred dollars reward to any body that’ll catch them 
^ere runaways of yours. Yes, says the colonel, cash down ; 
— and he looked me in the face, as though he thought I 
knew where to find you. 


A FUGITIVE. 


61 


‘^Just so, co.onel, says I; — and perhaps I might, — if 
you’ll promise me something in the first place. 

“ Promise you something, said the colonel haven’t I 
promised five hundred dollars already! — ^what is it you 
mean? 

‘‘ Says I, colonel, it isn’t the reward I was thinking 
about, — the reward is handsome — a very pretty reward 
surely. Pay me four hundred and fifty dollars, colonel, 
and promise me not to whip Archy, when you get him, 
and I’ll not ask for the other fifty. 

‘‘ Pshaw, nonsense, says the colonel. Pray Mr Gordon, 
what is it to you how much 1 whip the scoundrel, provided 
you get your money ? 

Says I, colonel. Jemmy Gordon isn’t the chap to for- 
get a favor. That boy Archy, saved my life, it’s three 
years ago, this veiy month ; and if you’ll promise me upon 
your honor, not to punish him for running away, I will un- 
dertake to hunt him up for you ; — and not otherwise. 

“ The colonel higgled and haggled a good deal ; — but 
when he found he couldn’t get round me no how, — ^he 
promised all I had asked him. So I told him how you had 
been at my house, and how you were coming again ; and 
he sent Stubbs and them other fellows to help me take 
you, — and that’s the long and the short of the whole mat- 
ter. So don’t be sulky Archy, but cheer up and take it 
kindly. You see, I meant to do what was best for us both.” 

‘‘ I wish you much joy, Mr Gordon of your part of the 
bargain ; and may you lose your five hundred dollars, the 
next time you play cards, and that will be before you are 
twelve hours older.” 

“ You’re in a passion, Archy, or you wouldn’t talk in 
that way. Well, boy, to tell the truth, I don’t much 
wonder at it. But by and by, you’ll think better of it. 
I should think you might be content with having broken 
my head ; my eyes, Archy, but it aches as though it would 
split.” So saying, JMr Gordon broke off the conversation 
and joined his companions. 

Little reason as I have to speak well of him, I am bold 
to say there are a great many men in the world, not much 
better than Jemmy Gordon. Five hundred dollars was a 
6 


62 


MEMOIRS OF 


great temptation to him. Besides, he hoped to secure the 
good graces of colonel Moore, and expected by his assist- 
ance, to get into the way of gaining a living respectably ; 
— at least, as respectably as any poor man can, in that 
country. He not only quieted his conscience with the idea 
that, if he did not betray me, somebody else would, — but 
he had made terms with colonel IMoore, for my benefit ; 
and actually seemed to have flattered himself into the no- 
tion, that he was doing me a favor by betraying me. 

There is many a gentleman in slave-holding America, 
— for anti-republican as it may seem, in no part of the 
world is the distinction between gentlemen and the common 
people, more distinctly marked, — ^who would consider it an 
insult to be compared with Jemmy Gordon, but whose 
whole life is a continued practice of the very principles 
upon which that man acted, when he made up his mind to 
play the traitor. Many is the gentleman in slave-holding 
America, who knows full well, — and in the secret recesses 
of his own soul, most unequivocally acknowledges, — that 
to keep his fellow men in bondage, is a gross, flagrant, high- 
handed violation of the first and clearest principles of jus- 
tice and equity, — a practice, abstractly considered, fully 
more criminal than piracy or highway robbery. Slavery, 
in the abstract, he acknowledges to himself and to others, 
to be totally indefensible. But then his slaves are his 
estate, — and he cannot live, like a gentleman, without 
them. Besides, he treats his servants particularly well, — 
so very well, that he does not hesitate to argue that they 
are much happier as slaves, than freedom under any form, 
could possibly make them 1 

When men of sense and education, can satisfy them- 
selves with such wretched sophistry as this, let us learn to 
have some charity for poor Jemmy Gordon. 


CHAPTER XL 

It was past noon before we arrived at Spring-Meadow, 
where colonel Moore had been, for some time, impatiently 


A FUGITIVE. 


63 


expecting us. But as he happened to have a large party 
to dine with him, he was too busy in entertaining his com- 
pany, to pay any immediate attention to us. Yet, no 
sooner had he received notice of our arrival, than he sent 
out Mr Gordon’s five hundred dollars. It was a large roll 
of bank notes ; the fellow’s eye kindled up at the sight of 
it, and he snatched it eagerly. I was looking steadily at 
him, and his eyes met mine. The ^change was sudden. 
He blushed and grew pale by turns ; — shame, remorse and 
self-contempt were painted in his face. He thrust the 
money hastily into his pocket, and walked away without 
speaking a word. 

Gassy and myself were driven to the stables, and locked - 
up in a close, narrow, dark room, which served sometimes 
as a corn-crib, and sometimes as a sort of dungeon for 
refractory slaves. We sat down upon the floor — ^for there 
was nothing else to sit upon — and poor Gassy sunk into my 
arms. Her grief and terror seemed to burst out afresh, and 
she wept bitterly. I kissed away her tears, and tried to 
console her. But she would not be comforted ; and little 
indeed, was the comfort I had to offer. The more I said 
to her, the more she wept; and she clung to me closer and 
closer, till her embrace became almost convulsive. He 
will kill us — He will separate us forever,” she munnured, 
in a low, inarticulate voice ; and it was the only reply she 
made to all I could say to her. 

Our situation was indeed pitiable. Had we fallen into 
the hands of an ordinary pirate or robber, there might have 
been some room for hope. The consciousness of his own 
violence, might perhaps alarm him ; the fear of avenging 
justice might stay his hand. At the worst, death, and that 
too a speedy and an easy one, would be the farthest limit 
of his malice. But we — unhappy creatures — could flatter 
ourselves with no such prospect. We were runaway 
slaves, who had fallen again into the hands of their master; 
— a master, whom the very recollection that he owned us, 
inspired with rage at our insolence, in daring to run away 
from him ; and who knew well, that both the law and 
public opinion would amply justify him in the infliction of 
any tortures not likely to result in immediate death. 


64 


MEMOIRS OF 


It is true that we had fled from the greatest outrage that 
can be inflicted upon a wife and a husband. But that was 
no excuse, — not even the slightest palliation. Slaves are 
not permitted to fly at all. It is their duty — alas! that 
such a word should be so prostituted ! — to submit without a 
munnur, to all the insults, outrages and oppression of their 
masters. 

I clasped my wife to my bosom, with almost the same 
trembling earnestness, with which she clung to me. 1 
felt, as she did, that it was the last time ; — and this idea 
sunk into my heart with a bitterness, which all my late 
ecstasies served only to aggravate. I almost stifled her 
with eager kisses ; — but the fever that glowed in her cheek 
was not the flush of pleasure ; and those deep sighs she 
heaved, — they could not be mistaken for the pantings of 
delight^ The speedy separation that threatened us, was 
not only terrible in anticipation, but it seemed to destroy all 
our capacity for present enjoyment. But for that, with 
Gassy in my arms, what should I have cared for chains and 
a dungeon ! — Dreading that, her lips lost all their sweet- 
ness, her bosom was an uneasy pillow, and though I could 
not leave her, every embrace seemed to increase both her 
distress and mine. 

We passed several hours in this way, without any inter- 
ruption. We had not tasted food that day, — and nobody 
brought us even a cup of cold water. The heat and close- 
ness of the room, into which the air had no admission, 
aggravated the fever in our blood, and made our thiist 
almost intolerable. How I longed for the cool spring, the 
balmy air, the freedom, we had lost 1 

Toward evening, we heard somebody approaching ; and 
I soon recognized the voices of colonel Moore and his 
overseer. They opened the door, and bade us come out. 
At first, the light dazzled my eyes so that I could scarcely 
distinguish one object from another ; but in a little while I 
was enabled to see that our visitors were accompanied by 
Peter, a tall fellow, with a very suspicious smile, the spy 
and tell-tale of the place, the detestation of all the servants, 
but the especial favorite of Mr Stubbs, and his regular 
assistant on all occasions. 





^ !V 


* 

It 


t- * 



* 



• » 


t 




► 

A. 


•* 








•T - 







r 



V 


V:^ -y. -^ f* 




» 



I 


^/<V 

«. . i 





» 

4 


Jl''V‘ 


« I 




# 


? 


< I 


. : :iC 


•-1 





f -4 


« 


• • 


' r 


r 


♦ 


« 








-I 




M. 




f • » 

k 


« 



4 

I 


rw 


w 


t 




t 



A. 






> 

/ • 


iV 



9 • 

< '. 



I 



I 


■^,1 



TRIAL OF AFFECTION. Page 00. 





A FUGITIVE. 


65 


Colonel Moore’s face was a good deal flushed, and I 
judged that he had been drinking. This was a practice 
very unusual with him. For though every dinner at his 
house, was pretty sure to end by putting the greater part 
of the guests upon the floor, colonel Moore generally passed 
the bottle, under the plea that his physician had forbidden 
its use, and commonly rose up the only sober man, from his 
own table. It was too plain, that on the present occasion, 
he had foi;gotten his accustomed sobriety. He spoke not a 
word to me, and I found it impossible to catch his eye ; but 
turning to his overseer, he said, in an under tone, and with 
the air of being a good deal irritated — It was a damned 
blunder, Mr Stubbs, to shut them up together. I thought 
you understood my orders better.” 

The overseer mumbled out some unintelligible apology, 
of which colonel Moore took no notice ; and without further 
preface or explanation, he ordered Mr Stubbs to tie me up. 

The padlock by which the chain was fastened about my 
neck was undone. They stripped me almost naked. Mr 
Stubbs produced a piece of rope with one end of which he 
bound my hands, and the other end, he made fast, with 
Peter’s assistknce, to a beam over my head ; — ^not however, 
till he had drawn it so tight as almost to lift me from the 
floor. 

Colonel Moore then ordered them to free Cassy from the 
chain. He put a heavy whip into her hand, and pointing 
to me, Take care my girl,” he said, that you lay it on 
to some purpose.” 

Poor Cassy looked about in utter amazement. She did 
not understand him ; she had no idea of such refined cruel- 
ty, such ferocious revenge. 

He repeated his commands, with a tone and a look that 
were frightful. “ If you wish to save your own carcass, 
see that you bring blood at every blow. I’ll' teach you — 
both of you — to trifle with me.” 

She now comprehended his brutal purpose ; — and giving 
one look of mingled horror and despair, sunk senseless to 
ihe ground. Peter was sent for water. He dashed it in 
her face, and she soon revived. They placed her on her 
feet, and colonel Moore again put the whip into her hand 
and repeated his orders. 


66 


MEMOIRS OF 


She threw it down, as if the touch had stung her; and 
looking him full in the face, the tears, all the while, streaming 
from her eyes, she said in a tone firm, but full of entreaty, 
Master, he is my husband ! ” 

That word husband, seemed to kindle colonel Moore into 
a new fury, which totally destroyed his self-command. He 
struck Gassy to the ground with his fists, trampled on her 
with his feet, and snatching, up the whip which she had 
thrown down, he laid it upon me with such violence, that 
the lash penetrated my flesh at every blow, and the blood 
ran trickling down my legs and stood in little puddles at 
my feet. The torture was too great for human endurance; 
I screamed with agony. “ Pshaw,” said my executioner, 
“ his noise will disturb the House;” — and drawing a hand- 
kerchief from his pocket, he thrust it into my mouth, and 
rammed it down my throat with the butt-end of his whip- 
handle. Having thus effectually gagged me, he renewed 
his lashes. How long they were continued I do not know ; 
a cloud began to swim before my eyes ; my head grew 
dizzy and confused ; and a fortunate fainting-fit soon put 
me beyond the reach of torture. 


CHAPTER XII. 

When I recovered my senses, I found myself stretched 
upon a wretched pallet, which lay upon the floor, in one 
corner of a little, old, and ruinous hovel. I was very weak 
and hardly able to move ; and I afterwards learned that I 
had just passed through the paroxysm of a fever. A deaf 
old woman, too much superannuated to be fit for any thing 
but a nurse, was my only companion. I recognized the old 
lady, and forgetting that she could not hear me, I put her a 
thousand questions in a breath. I dreaded, yet I wished to 
learn the fate of poor Gassy ; and it was to her that most 
of my questions related. But to all my inquiries the old 
woman returned no answer. I might scream myself deaf, 
she said, and she could not hear a word. Besides, she told 
me, I was too sick and weak to talk. 


A FUGITIVE. 


67 


T was not to be silenced in that way, and only bawfed 
the louder, and added signs and gestures, to enable the old 
woman to understand me. But it was plain that aunt Judy 
had no intention to gratify my curiosity ; for when she 
found she could not quiet me, she went out and locking the 
door after her, left me to my own meditations. These 
were not very agreeable. As yet however, my thoughts 
were so confused, and my head so dizzy, that I could 
scarcely be said to reflect at all. 

I learned afterwards, that it was more than a week, that 
I had remained delirious, the effect of the violent fever into 
which I had been thrown, and which threatened a speedy 
termination to my miserable existence. But the crisis was 
now past. My youth and the vigor of my constitution 
had carried me through it, and had preserved me for new 
sufferings. 

I recovered rapidly, and was soon able to walk about. 
Lest J should make an undue use of my returning strength, 
and attempt another escape, I was presently accommodated 
with fetters and handcuffs. My fetters were taken off once 
a day, for about an hour, and under Peter’s supervision, I 
was allowed to breathe the fresh air, and to take a short 
walk about the plantation. It was in vain that I attempted 
to get from Peter any information concerning my wife. He 
could not, or he would not tell me any thing about her. 

I thought that perhaps he might sell the information 
which he refused to give ; and I promised to make him a 
present of some clothes, if he would allow me to. visit my 
former house. We went together. This house, 1 had 
been enabled, in anticipation of my marriage, and through 
the bounty of Mrs Moore and her daughter, to fit up quite 
comfortably. It was furnished with a variety of things, 
seldom seen in a slave’s cabin. But I found it stripped 
and plundered ; every article of furniture was gone, and 
my chest was broken open and all my clothes taken away. 
For this I was no doubt indebted to my fellow servants. 
The strongest, or almost the strongest impulse of the human — • 
mind, is the desire of acquisition. This passion, the slave 
can only gratify by plunder. Besides, such is the baneful 
eflbct of slavery, that it almost destroys the very germ of 


68 


MEMOIRS OF 


virtue. If oppression makes the wise man mad, it too often 
makes the honest man a villain. It embitters the feelings, 
and hardens and brutifies the heart. He who finds himself 
plundered from his birth, of his liberty and his labor — ^his 
only inheritance — becomes selfish, reckless, and regardless 
of every thing save the immediate gratification of the 
present moment. Plundered of every thing himself, he is 
ready to plunder in his turn, even his brothers in mis- 
fortune. 

Finding my house stripped, and my clothes stolen, it put 
me in mind to feel in my pockets, for my money. That 
was gone too. Indeed I soon recollected, that when sur- 
prised and seized by Mr Gordon and his assistants, Mr 
Stubbs had searched my pockets, and transferred their con- 
tents to his own. This, of course, was the last that I 
expected to see of my money. According to the Virginian 
code of morals, Mr Stubbs was a very respectable man, 
who did what was perfectly proper. Certainly, it was 
highly dangerous to trust a rogue and a runaway with the 
possession of a considerable sum of money. But according 
to the same code, the servants who had stolen my clothes, 
were a set of outrageous thieves, who richly deserved a 
whipping. So Mr Stubbs declared, whom we happened to 
meet, as we were returning, and to whom I complained that 
my house had been plundered. That honest gentleman 
worked himself quite into a passion, and swore roundly that 
if he could catch the thieves he would make them smart for 
it. Notwithstanding this outburst of virtuous indignation, 
Mr Stubbs said nothing about returning my money, and I 
judged it safest not to introduce the subject myself. 

In two or three weeks I had nearly recovered my 
strength, and the gashes with which my back had been 
scored were quite healed over. I was beginning to wonder 
what colonel Moore intended to do with me ; when, one 
evening, I received a message from Mr Stubbs, to be up by 
sunrise, the next morning, and ready for a journey. Where 
we were going, or what was to be the object of our travels, 
he did not condescend to inform me ; nor did I feel much 
curiosity to know. I had now one great consolation. Do 
what they pleased, it was impossible to render me any 


A FUGITIVE. 


69 


more miserable. It was this idea which sustained me,~and 
enabled me to regard the future with a sort of careless and 
stupid indifference, at which, when I reflect upon it, I am 
myself surprised. 

In the morning, Mr Stuhbs came for me. He was on 
horseback, whip in hand, as usual. He undid my fetters, 
but allowed me to retain my handcuffs. He tied a piece 
of rope about my neck, and fastened the, other end of it to 
his own waist. Thus guarded against escapes, he mounted 
his horse, and bade me walk beside him. I was still rather 
weak, and sometimes my pace flagged a little ; — ^but a 
stroke from Mr Stubbs’s whip soon quickened me into 
vigor. I inquired where we were going. “ You’ll know 
when you get there,” was the answer. 

That night we lodged at a sort of tavern. We both 
occupied one room, — ^he the bed, and I the floor. He 
took the cord from my neck and bound my legs with it. 
It Was drawn so tight, and caused me so much pain, that I 
could not sleep. •Several times I complained to Mr Stubbs ; 
but he ordered me to go to sleep quietly, and not be 
troubling him with foolish complaints. The next morning 
when he came to untie me, he found my ankles a good 
deal swollen. He seemed eorry that he had paid no more 
attention to my appeals, but excused himself by saying, 
that we were all such a devilish pack of liars, there was no 
telling when to believe us ; and he did not want to be at 
the trouble of getting up for nothing. 

The next day we continued our journey ; — ^but I was so 
broken down by the fatigues of the day previous, and hy 
the want of sleep, that nothing but the frequent application 
of Mr Stubbs’s whip could stimulate me into the necessary 
exertion. My spirits and that stubbornness of soul, which 
hitherto had sustained me, seemed to fail at the same time 
with my strength, and I wept like a child. At last, we 
• reached our journey’s end. Late that evening, we entered 
the city of Richmond. I am not able to describe the town ; 
for I was hurried off to jail, and there locked up for safe 
keeping. 

I was now told why we had come. Colonel INloore, 
according to Mr Stubbs’s account, was sick of such an 


70 


MEMOIRS OF 


unruly fellow, and had determined to sell me. I had not 
seen him since the day I had fainted under the energy of 
his paternal discipline. Nor did I ever see him afterwards. 
A strange parting that, between a son and a father ! 


CHAPTER XIII. 

The next day I was to be sold. There was to be 
a public sale of slaves, and several besides myself, were to 
be disposed of. I was fettered and handcuffed, and taken 
to market. The rest of the merchandise was already col- 
lected ; but it was some time before the sale began, and I 
occupied the interval in looking about me. Several of 
the groups attracted my particular attention. 

The first that caught my eye, was an old man whose head 
was completely white, and a pretty little girl, his grand- 
daughter, as he told me, about ten or twelve years old. 
Both the old man and the little girl had iron collars about 
their necks, which were connected by a heavy chain. One 
would have imagined, that the t)ld age of the man, and the 
youth of the girl, would have made such savage precautions 
unnecessary. But their master, so far as I could learn, had 
resolved to sell them in a fit of passion, and the chains 
perhaps were intended more for punishment than security. 

A man and his wife with an infant in her arms, stood 
next to the old man and his daughter. The man and wife 
were quite young, and apparently fond of each other; at 
least, they seemed very much distressed at the idea of 
falling into the hands of different purchasers. The woman 
now and then would address some one or other of the 
company, who seemed to indicate an intention of buying. 
She would beg them to purchase herself and her hus- 
band ; and she ran over, with great volubility, the good 
qualities of both. The man looked on the ground, and 
preserved a moody and sullen silence. 

There was another group of eight or ten men and women, 
who seemed to regard the sale with as much unconcern, as 


A FUGITIVE. 


71 


if they were merely spectators. They laughed, and talked, 
and jested with one another with as much gaiety as any of 
the company. An apologist for tyranny, would no doubt, 
rejoice in such a spectacle, and would be emboldened to 
argue, that after all being sold at public auction is not so 
terrible a thing, as some weak people are apt to imagine. 
The argument would be quite as sound as any that the 
slave-holder ever uses ; and for ingenuity and conclusiveness, 
deserves to be compared with that of the philosopher, who 
having seen through the grates of a prison, a parcel of 
condemned criminals laughing and jesting together, con- 
cluded that the expectation of being hung, must have some- 
thing in it very exhilarating. 

The truth is, that the human mind, in its eager, though 
too often unavailing struggle after happiness, will still make 
the most of its means ; — and even in the valley of despair, 
or under the ribs of death itself, still strives to create some 
matter of enjoyment. Even the slave will sing at his task ; 
he can laugh too, though he find himself sold like an ox in 
the market. The tyrant discovers that all his wrongs and 
oppressions have not been able to extinguish in the soul of 
his victim, the capability of enjoyment; and he points you 
to these outbursts of a nature not yet totally subdued, and 
dares to boast of the happiness he causes ! 

But to be sold, is not always a laughing matter. The 
first bargain which the auctioneer offered to the company, 
was a man apparently about thirty, with a. fine, open, pre- 
possessing countenance. He had no expectation of being 
sold, till the moment he was placed upon the table ; for it 
appeared that his master who lived near the city, had lured 
him to town under the delusive pretext of an intention to 
hire him out to some one of the citizens. When the poor 
fellow found that he was actually to be sold, he was seized 
with such a trembling that he could scarcely support himself. 
He shook from head to foot ; and his face indicated the 
greatest terror and distress. The two principal bidders, — 
and they seemed to enter into a pretty warm competition, — 
were a gentleman of the neighborhood, who appeared to 
know the poor fellow on sale, and a dashing, buckish young 
man, who, it was said, was a slave-trader from South 


72 


MEMOIRS OF 


Carolina, who had come to purchase slaves for that 
market. 

As the sale proceeded, it was curious,, but at the same 
time most distressing, to observe the anxiety of the unhap- 
py slave. When the slave-trader took the lead, his jaw 
fell, his eyes rolled wildly, and he seemed the very picture 
of despair; but when the Virginian bid higher, a gleam of 
pleasure shot across his face, the tears ran down his cheeks, 
and his earnest “God bless you, master!” was enough to 
touch the hardest heart. He interrupted the sale by his 
cries and vociferations, and not even the whip could keep 
him still. He called upon his favorite bidder by name, and 
entreated him to persevere, by every motive he could think 
of. He promised to serve him faithfully to the last minute 
of his life, and work himself to death in his service, if he 
would only buy him, only save him from being wholly 
separated from his wife and children, and sent away — ^lie 
knew not whither — from the place wh^re he was born ’ and 
raised, and where, as he said, he had always behaved well, 
and borne a good character. Not that he had any particu- 
lar objections to the other gentleman either, — for the poor 
fellow began to see the danger of offending a man who was 
likely to become his master ; — ^no doubt he was a very fine 
gentleman too ; but he was a stranger, and would take him 
out of the country, and carry him far away from his wife 
and children ; — and as he mentioned them, his voice sunk, 
choked and interrupted, to an inarticulate sobbing. 

The bidders kept up the contest with much spirit. The 
man was evidently a first-rate hand. Aside from this, the 
Virginian seemed touched by the poor fellow’s entreaties, 
and dropped some hints about slave-traders, which put his 
opponent into a violent passion, and came near ending in 
a quarrel. The interposition of the by-standers, kept the 
competitors apart; — ^but the slave-trader, whose passions 
were roused, swore that he would have the ^ boy,’ cost what 
he might, if it were only to teach him a little good man- 
ners. One or two of the company cried shame, and called 
upon the slave-trader to leave off bidding, and suffer the 
poor fellow to remain in the country. He replied with an 
oath and a sneer, that he was not fool enough to be bam- 


A FUGITIVE. 


73 


boozkd by any such nonsense ; and immediately rose fifty 
dollars on the last bid. This was more than the Virginian 
could afford to sacrifice to a fit of good nature, and piqued 
and chagrined, he yielded up the contest. The auctioneer 
knocked off the purchase ; and the man, more dead than 
alive, was delivered into the hands of the slave-trader’s 
attendants, who received orders to give him twenty lashes 
on the spot, for his “ cursed ill-manneredly Virginian inso- 
lence.” 

The sneering emphasis, with which this was spoken, 
created no little sensation among the by-standers ; but as 
the slave-trader strutted about with his hand on his dirk 
handle, and as two pistols might plainly be seen sticking 
out of his pockets, nobody skw fit to question this provoking 
exercise of ‘ his sacred right of property,’ and the sale pro- 
ceeded as before. 

At length came my turn. I was stripped half naked, 
the better to show my joints and muscles, and placed upon 
the table or platform, on which the subject of the sale was 
exposed to the examination of the purchasers. I was 
whirled about, my limbs were felt, and my capabilities dis- 
cussed, in a slang much like that of a company of horse- 
jockeys. Various were the remarks that were made upon 
me. One fellow declared that I had “ a savage sullen 
look;” another swore that my eye was “devilish mali- 
cious;” a third remarked that these light-colored fellows 
were all rascals ; — to which the auctioneer replied, that he 
never knew a slave of any smartness who was not a rogue. 

Abundance of questions were put me, as to where I was 
raised, why 1 was sold, and what I was fit for. To all 
these inquiries I made the shortest and most indefinite 
answers. I was not in a humor to gratify this curiosity ; 
and I had none of that ambition to bring a high price, so 
common among slaves, the last and lowest form in which is 
displayed that love of superiority, which exercises so prin- 
cipal an influence over the feelings and the actions of men."*- 

Mr Stubbs kept in the back gi'ound, and said nothing. 
He had his own reasons, I suppose, for this reserve. The 
auctioneer did his best. According to his account, there was 
not a stronger, more laborious, docile and obedient servant 
7 


74 < 


MEMOIRS OF 


to be bought in all the States. Notwithstanding all these 
praises, a suspicion seemed to spread itself that my master 
had some reasons for selling me, which he did not think fit 
to avow. One suggested that I must be consumptive ; 
another thought it likely I was subject to fits; while a tliiid 
expressed the opinion that I was an unruly fellow and 
“ mighty hard to manage.” The scars on my back tended 
to confirm these suspicions ; and I was knocked off, at last, 
at a very low price, to a portly, smiling old gentleman, by 
name, major Thornton. 

No sooner had the auctioneer’s hammer struck upon the 
table, than my new master spoke kindly to me, and ordered 
my irons to be taken off. Against this, Mr Stubbs and 
the auctioneer remonstrated very earnestly ; and assured 
the purchaser that if he unchained me, he did it at his own 
risk. “ 1 know it,” replied my new master, “ the risk is 
mine, — but 1 will never own a servant who wants to run 
away from me.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

When my new master learned that I had but just recov- 
ered from a fever, and that my strength was not yet entirely 
restored, he procured a horse for me, and we set out 
together for his plantation. He lived a considerable dis- 
tance west of Richmond, in that part of the State, known 
as Middle Virginia. During the ride, he entered into 
conversation with me, and I found him a very different 
person from any one I had ever met with before. 

He told me that I might consider myself lucky in falling 
into his hands ; for he made it a point to treat his servants 
better than anybody in the neighborhood. If they are 
discontented, or unruly, or apt to run away,” he added, “ 1 
sell them at once, and so get rid of them. I don’t want 
any such fellows about me. But as my servants know 
very well, that they stand no chance to better themselves 
l^y chtuiging their master, they are very cautious how they 


A FUGITIVE. 


75 

offend me. Be obedient, my boy, and do your task, and 1 
will ensure you plenty to eat, enough clothes, and more 
indulgence than you will be likely to get from any other 
master.” Such was the amount of major Thornton^s lec- 
ture, which, it took him however, some five or six houi-s to 
get through with. 

It was late in the evening before we arrived at Oakland, 
— for that was the name of major Thornton’s property. 
The house was of brick, with wooden porticos. It was not 
large, but neat and very handsome, and presented many more 
appearances of substantial comfort than are to be found 
about most of the houses of Virginia. The grounds around 
it, were prettily laid out, and ornamented with flowers and 
shmbbery, — a thing quite uncommon, and which I had 
seldom seen before. At a distance, on a fine swell, were 
the servants’ cabins, built of brick, neat and substantial ; 
not placed in a straight line, but clustered together in *a 
manner that had something picturesque about it. They 
were shaded by fine large oaks ; no underbrush nor weeds 
were suffered to grow about them, and altogether, they 
presented an appearance of neatness %nd comfort, as new 
and singular as it was pleasing. The servants’ cabins, on all 
the plantations I had ever seen before, were a set of miser^ 
able ruinous hovels, with leaky roofs and clay floors, almost 
buried in a rank growth of weeds, and as dirty and ill-kept 
as they were uncomfortable. 

The children, who were playing about the cabins, fur- 
nished a new occasion of surprise. I had been accustomed 
to see the children of a plantation, running about stark 
naked, or dressed — if dressed at all — in a shirt of dirty 
osnaburgs, hanging in tatters about their legs, and never 
washed after it was once put on. But the children at 
Oakland were neatly and comfortably clothed, and pre- 
sented nothing of that squalid, pinched, neglected and. 
half-starved appearance, to which my eye was so well 
accustomed. Their merry faces, and boisterous sports, 
called up no idea of juvenile wretchedness. I observed 
too, that the hands, who were just coining in from their 
work, were all well clothed. I saw none of those patched, 
tattered, ragged and filthy garments so common on other 
plantations. 


76 


MEMOIRS OF 


]\Iajor Thornton was not a planter ; — that is to say, he 
did not make tobacco, and he chose to call himself a farmer. 
His principal crop was wheat ; and he was a great advocate 
for the clover system of cultivation, which he had adopted 
and pursued with much success. He owned some thirty 
or forty working hands ; the children and superannuated, 
made his entire stock of slaves upwards of eighty. He 
kept no overseer, but managed for himself. Indeed it was 
a maxim with him, that an overseer was enough to ruin any 
man. He was naturally stirring and industrious, and agri- 
culture Avas his hobby, a hobby which he rode to some 
purpose. 

In all these things, and many others, he was the perfect 
contrast of all his neighbors; and for that reason, very little 
liked by any of them. He carefully avoided horse-racing, 
cock-fights, political meetings, drinking, gambling, and frol- 
icking of every sort. His money, he used to say, cost him 
too much to make it, to be thrown away upon a bet ; and 
as to frolics, he had neither time nor taste for any such 
nonsense. His neighbors revenged themselves for this 
contempt of their l^vorite sports, by pronouncing him a 
mean-spirited money-making fellow. They went further, 
and accused him of being a bad citizen and a dangerous 
neighbor. They complained most bitterly, that his exces- 
sive indulgence to his servants made all the slaves in the 
neighborhood, uneasy and discontented ; and at one time, 
some of them went so far as to talk about giving him warn- 
ing to move out of the county. 

But major Thornton was a man of spirit. He under- 
stood his own rights ; — ^lie knew well the people among 
whom he lived, and what sort of reasoning would influence 
them most. He contrived to get hold of an offensive 
remark of one of the busiest of his ill-disposed neighbor, 
and sent him a challenge. It was accepted ; and his 
antagonist was shot through the heart at the first fire. 
Henceforward, — though his neighbors liked him no better 
than before, — they took very good care how they talked 
about him, and allowed him to go on in his own way, 
without any interference. 

Major Thornton had not been bred a planter, and this 


77 


A FUGITIVE. 

perhaps was the reason, why he departed so much frorA 
the ordinary routine, and managed things so very differently 
from all his neighbors. He was bom of a good family, as 
they say in Virginia, but his father died when he was a 
mere boy, and left but a very scanty property. He began 
life, in a small way, in a country store. His shrewdness, 
economy, and attention to his business, enabled him, in the 
course of a few years, to lay up a considerable sum of 
money. In Virginia, trade is hardly looked upon as respec- 
table, — ^at least, such was the case at the time of which I am 
speaking, — and every one who desires to be any body, aims 
at becoming a landed proprietor. About the time that 
major Thornton had made enough, to think of changing his 
store for a plantation, the proprietor of Oakland, having 
already wasted two good estates on dogs, horses, and wild 
debauchery, became so pressed for money, as to be obliged 
to bring his remaining property under the hammer. Major 
Thornton became the purchaser ; — ^but the place he bought, 
was very different from Oakland as I saw it. The builds 
ings which were old and ugly, were all out of repair and 
just tumbling to the ground ; and the land was nearly 
ruined by that miserable, thriftless system of cultivation, so 
universal throughout the slave-holding states of America. 

In a few years after the property had passed into the hands 
of major Thornton, every thing was changed. The old 
houses were torn down and new ones built. The grounds 
about the house were enclosed and ornamented ; and the 
land, under skilful management, was fast regaining its origin- 
al fertility. Those who had been born and bred planters, 
and whose estates were very much in the same way in 
which Oakland had been before it fell into the hands of 
major Thornton, looked at what was going on there, with 
astonishment and envy, and wondered how it could possibly 
happen. Major Thornton was always ready to tell them ; 
for he was extremely fond of talking, — particularly about 
himself and his system of farming. But though he had 
explained the whole matter at least ten times, to every orie 
of his neighbors, he never could make a single convert, 
He nad three favorite topics ; but he was equally unsuc- 
ce^ful upon all of them. He never colild persuade any 

7 * 


78 


MEMOIRS OF 


one of his neighbors that a clover lay was the true cure 
for sterile fields ; that the only w^ay to have a plantation 
well managed, was to manage it one’s self ; or that to give 
servants enough to eat, was a sure method to prevent them 
from plundering the corn-fields and stealing sheep. 

But though major Thornton could gain no imitators, he 
still persevered in farming according to his own notions. In 
no respect was he more an innovator than in the manage- 
ment of his slaves. A merciful man, he used to say, is 
merciful to his beast ; and not having been raised on a 
plantation, he could not bear the idea of treating his servants 
worse than his horses. It may do very well for you, 
colonel,” he said one day, to one of his neighbors, “ to tie 
a fellow up and give him forty lashes with your own hand ; 
you were bom and bred to it, and I dare say you find it 
very easy. But as odd as you may think it, I had much 
rather be flogged myself than to flog one of my servants ; 
and though sometimes I am obliged to do it, it is a great 
^oint with me to get along with as little whipping as possi- 
ble. That’s a principal reason why I keep no overseer, — 
for a cow-hide and a pair of irons, are the only two things 
those fellows have any notion of. They have no wish, and 
if they had, they have not the sense, to get along in any 
other way ; — the devil take the whole generation of them. 
Eveiy body, you know, has their oddities. For my part, I 
hate to hear the crack of a whip on my plantation, even 
though it be nothing more than a cart-whip.” 

The above speech of major Thornton’s, contained a brief 
summary of his system. He was, what every other slave- 
holder is, and from the very necessity of his condition must 
be, — a tyrant. He felt no scruple in compelling his fellow 
men to labor, in order that he might appropriate the fruits 
of that labor to his own benefit, — and in this certainly, if in 
any thing, the very essence of tyranny consists. But 
though a tyrant, as every slave-holder is and must be, he 
was a reasonable and, as far as possible, a humane one, — 
which very few slave-holders either are or can be. He had 
no more thought of relinquishing what he and -the law^s, 
called his property in his slaves, than he had of leaving ’his 
land to be occupied by the first comer. He w^ould have 


A FUGITIVE. 


79 


Deen as ready as any of his neighbors, to have denounced 
the idea of emancipation, or the notion of limiting his power 
over his servants, as a ridiculous absurdity, and an imperti- 
nent interference with his ‘ most sacred rights.’ But though 
in theory, he claimed all the authority and prerogatives of 
the most unlimited despotism, he displayed in his practice, 
a certain share of common sense and common humanity, — 
two things, which so far as relates to the management of 
his slaves, it is extremely uncommon for a slave-holder to 
have, or if he has them, very difficult for him to exercise. 

TJhese unusual gifts led him to a discovery, which at the 
time was entirely new in his neighborhood ; though I hope 
before now, it has become general. He discovered that 
men cannot work without eating ; and that so far as the 
capability of labor is concerned, there is the same policy in 
attending to the food, shelter and comfort of one’s slaves, as 
in spending something on corn and stabling for one’s horses. 
‘Feed well and work hard,’ was major Thornton’s motto 
and practice, — a motto, and a practice, which in any other 
country than America, would never have subjected him to 
the charge of unreasonable and superfluous humanity. 

As to whipping, major Thornton, to use his own phrase, 
could not bear it. Whether he felt some qualms of con- 
science at the barefaced, open tyranny of the lash, — which 
I do not think very probable, for I once heard him tell a 
Methodist parson, who ventured to say something to him 
on that delicate subject, that he had as much right to flog 
his slaves as to eat his dinner; or whether it was the influ- 
ence of that instinctive humanity which is wanting only in 
brutal tempers, and which, till evil custom has worn it out, 
will not permit us to inflict pain, without feeling ourselves a 
sympathetic suffering ; or whatever might be the reason ; 
unless major Thornton was put into a passion — to which 
he was but seldom liable — he certainly had a great horror 
at using the whip. 

But this was not all. Another man might have detested 
it as much as he did ; but the practice of a year or two in 
planting, and the apparent impossibility of dispensing with 
its use, would have taught him to get rid of so inconvenient 
a squeamishness. There are very few men indeed — and 


60 


MEMOIRS OF 


of ?]\ men in the world, very few planters — whose good 
sense and knowledge of human nature, would enable them 
to manage their slaves by any other means. Major Thorn- 
ton, however, contrived to get on wonderfully well ; and in 
all the time that I lived with him, which was nearly two 
years, there were not more than a half a dozen whippings 
on the place. If one of his servants was guilty of any 
thing, which in a slave, is esteemed especially enormous ; 
such as running away, repeated theft, idleness, insolence 
or insubordination, major Thornton sent him off to be sold. 
•By a strange, but common inconsistency, tl)is man of feel- 
ing, who could not bear to whip a slave, or to see nim 
whipped, or even to have him whipped on his own planta- 
tion, felt no scruples at all, at tearing him from the arms of 
his wife and children, and setting him up at public sale, to 
fall into the hands of any ferocious master, who might 
chance to purchase him ! 

This dread of being sold, was ever before our eyes ; and 
was as efficacious as the lash is, on other plantations, in forcing 
us to labor and submission. We knew very well, that 
there were few masters like major Thornton ; and the 
thought of exchanging our nice, neat cottages, our plentiful 
allowance, our regular supply of clothing, and the general 
comfort and indulgence of Oakland, for the fare and the 
treatment to be expected from the common run of masters, 
was more terrible than a dozen whippings. Major Thorn- 
ton understood this well ; and he took care to keep up the 
terrors of it, by making an example of some delinquent, 
once in a year or two. 

Then he had the art of exciting our emulation by little 
prizes and presents ; he was very scrupulous never to exact 
any thing beyond the appointed task ; and he kept us in 
good humor, by allowing us, when not at work, to be very 
much our own masters, and to go where, and do what we 
pleased. We were rather cautious though, how we visitea 
the neighboring plantations ; for with a magnanimity worthy 
of sieve-holders, some of major Thornton’s neighbors were 
in the habit of gratifying their spite against him, by improv* 
ing every opportunity that offered, to abuse his servants. 
And here I may as well relate an incident that happened 


A FUGITIVE.. 


81 


to myself, which will serve, at once, as a curious illustratior 
of Virginian manners, and a proof of what 1 believe, will bt 
found to be true all the world over, — that where the lawt 
aim at the oppression of one half the people of a country, 
they are seldom treated with much respect by the other half 

Captain Robinson was one of major Thornton’s nearest 
neighbors, and a person with whom he had frequent alter- 
' cations. I was passing along on the public road one Sun- 
day, at a little distance from Oakland, when I met captain 
Robinson on horseback, followed by a servant. He bade me 
stop, and inquired if I was the fellow whom that damned 
scoundrel Thornton” sent to his house yesterday with an 
insolent message about his lower-field fences. I answered, 
that I had been sent yesterday with a message about the 
fence, which I had delivered to his overseer. 

A mighty pretty message it was, mighty ! I’ll tell you 
what, boy, if my overseer had known his business, he 
would have tucked you up on the spot and given you 
forty lashes.” 

I told him that I had only delivered the message which 
my master had sent me with, and it seemed hard to blame 
me for that. 

Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, you infernal scoun- 
drel — I’ll teach both you and your master what it is to 
insult a gentleman. Lay hold of him Tom, while I dust 
that new jacket of his a little.” 

Having received these orders from his master, captain 
Robinson’s man Tom, jumped off his horse and laid hold 
of me ; but as I struggled hard and was the stronger of the 
two, I should soon have got away, if the master had not 
dismounted and come to the aid of his servant. Both to- 
gether, they were too strong for me ; and having succeeded 
m getting me down, they stripped off my coat, and bound 
my hands. Captain Robinson then mounted his horse, and 
beat me with his whip, till it was quite worn out. Having 
thus satisfied his rage, he rode off followed by Tom, with- 
out taking the trouble to loose my hands. They had no 
sooner left me, than I began to look about for my hat and 
coat. Doth were missing ; — and whether it was the cap- 
tain or his servant that carried them off, I never could dis- 


82 


MEMOIRS OF 


cover. I suppose though, it was the servant, — for I recol- 
lect very well seeing Tom, a few Sundays after, strutting 
about at a Methodist meeting, with a blue coat on, which I 
could almost have sworn to be mine. 

When I got home, and told my master what had hap- 
pened, he was in a towering passion. At first, he was for 
riding at once to captain Robinson’s and calling for an 
explanation. But presently he recollected that the county 
court was to meet the next day, at which he had business. 
This would give him an opportunity to consult his lawyer; 
and after a little reflection, he thought it best not to move 
in the affair till he had legal advice upon it. 

The next day he took me with him. We called upon 
the lawyer ; I told what had happened to me, and major 
Thornton inquired what satisfaction the law would af- 
ford him. 

The lawyer answered, that the law in this case was veiy 
clear, and the remedy it provided, all-sufficient. “Some 
people,” he said, “who know nothing about the matter, 
have asserted that the law in the slave-holding States, does 
not protect the person of the slave against the Violence of 
the free, and that any white man may flog any slave, at his 
own good pleasure. This is a very great mistake, if not a 
wilful falsehood. The law permits no such thing. It ex- 
tends the mantle of its protection impartially over bond and 
free. In this respect, the law knows no distinction. If a 
freeman is assaulted, he has his action for damages against 
the assailant ; and if a slave is assaulted, the master of that 
slave, who is his legal guardian and protector, can bring his 
action for damages. Now in this case, major Thornton, it 
is quite plain that you have good ground of action against 
captain Robinson ; and the jury, I dare say, will give you 
a swinging verdict. I suppose you are able to prove all 
these facts?” 

“ Prove them — to be sure,” answered my master, “ here 
is Archy himself who has told you the whole story.” 

“ Yes, my good sir, but you do not seem to remember 
that a slave cannot be admitted to testify against a white 
man.” 

“ And pray tell me then,” said major Thornton, “ what 


A FUGITIVE. 


83 


good the law you speak of is going to do me ? Did not 
Robinson catch Archy alone, and abuse him as he has told 
you ? You don’t suppose he was fool enough to call in a 
white man on purpose to be a witness against him. Why, 
sir, notwithstanding the protection of the law, which you 
commend so highly, every servant I have may be beaten 
by this Robinson every day in the week, and I not be able 
to get the slightest satisfaction. The devil take such law 
I say.” 

‘‘But my dear sir,” answered the lawyer, “you must 
consider the great danger and inconvenience of allowing 
slaves to be witnesses.” 

“ Why yes,” said my master with a half smile, “ I fancy 
it would be rather dangerous for some of my acquaintances ; 
— quite inconvenient no doubt. Well sir, since you say 
the law can’t help me in this matter, I must take care of 
myself. I cannot allow my servants to be abused in this 
way. I’ll horsewhip that scoundrel Robinson at sight.” 

With these words, my master left the office, and I fol- 
lowed behind him. We had gone but a little way down 
the street, when he had an unexpected opportunity of carry- 
ing his threat into execution, — ^for as it chanced, we met 
captain Robinson, who had business, it seemed, at the coun- 
ty court, as well as major Thornton. My master did not 
waste many words upon him, but began striking him over 
the shoulders with his riding whip. Captain Robinson drew 
a pistol ; — ^my master threw down his whip and drew a 
pistol also. The captain fired, but without effect ; major 
Thornton then levelled his weapon, — but Robinson called 
out that he was unarmed and begged him not to fire. Ma- 
jor Thornton hesitated a moment, and then dropped his 
hand. By this time, quite a crowd had collected about us, 
and some friend of captain Robinson’s handed him a loaded 
pistol. The combatants renewed their aim, and fired to- 
gether. Captain Robinson fell desperately wounded. His 
ball missed my master, but passed through the body of a 
free colored man, who was the only person, of all the com- 
pany, who made any attempt to separate the parties. The 
poor fellow fell dead ; and the people about declared that it 
was good enough for him, — for what right had “ a cursed 


MEMOIRS OF 


84 

free fellow’’ like him to be interfering between gentle- 
men ? 

Captain Robinson’s friends lifted him up and carried him 
home. Major Thornton and myself walked off the field in 
triumph, — and so the affair ended. Such affrays are much 
talked about ; but the grand jury very seldom hears any 
thing of them ; and the conqueror is pretty sure to rise in 
the public estimation. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Some persons perhaps may think that having fallen into 
the hands of such a master as major Thornton, I had now 
nothing to do, but to eat, to work and to be happy. 

Had I been a horse or an ox, there would be good ground 
for this idea ; but unfortunately, I was a man ; and the 
animal appetites are by no means, the only motive of hu- 
man action, nor the sole sources of human happiness or 
misery. 

It is certainly true that several of major Thornton’s ser- 
vants, bom perhaps with but little sensibility, and brutalized 
by a life of servitude, seemed very well content with their 
lot. This was the sort of servant, which major Thornton 
especially admired. In this particular, he did not differ 
much from his neighbors. The more stupid a field hand 
is, the more he is esteemed ; and a slave who shows any 
signs of capacity, is generally set down as certain to be a 
rogue and a rascal. 

I soon discovered my master’s fondness for stupid fel- 
lows ; and I took care to play the fool to his entire satisfac- 
tion. In a short time, I made myself quite a favorite ; and 
my master having taken a fancy to me, I was more indulged 
perhaps, than any servant on the place. But this could 
not make me happy. 

Human happiness — ^with some very limited exceptions — 
is never in fruition, but always in prospect and pursuit. It 
is not this, that, or the otlier situation that can give happi- 


A FUGITIVE. 


85 


ness. Riches, power or glory, are nothing when possessed. 
It is the pleasure of the pursuit and the struggle, it is the 
very labor of their attainment, in which consists the happi- 
ness they bring. 

Those moralists who have composed so many homilies 
upon the duty of contentment, betray an extreme ignorance 
of human nature. No situation, however splendid, in which 
one is compelled to remain fixed and stationaiy, can long 
afford pleasure ; and on the other hand, no condition, how- 
ever destitute or degraded, out of which one has a fair 
propect, or any thing like a sufficient hope of rising, can 
justly be considered as utterly miserable. This is the con- 
stitution of the human mind ; and in it, we find the ex 
planation of a thousand things, which without this key to 
their meaning, seem full of mystery and contradiction. 

Though all men have not the same objects of pursuit, 
all are impelled and sustained by the same hope of success. 
Nothing can satisfy the lofty desires of one man, but influ- 
ence, fame, or power, the myrtle wreath or laurel crown ; 
another aims no higher than to rise from abject poverty to a 
little competency, or, if his ambition is of another sort, to 
be the chief person in his native village, or the oracle of a 
country neighborhood. How different are these aims! — 
and yet, the impulse that prompts them, is the same. It is 
the desire of social superiority. He whom circumstances 
permit to yield to this impulse of his nature, and to pursue 
— successfully or not, it matters little — but to pursue with 
some tolerable prospect of success, the objects which have 
captivated his fancy, may be regarded as having all the 
chance for happiness, which the lot of humanity allows ; 
while he, whom fate, or fortune, or whatever malignant cause, 
compels to suppress and forego the instinctive impulses and 
wishes of his heart — whatever in other respects may be his 
situation — ^is a wretch condemned to sorrow, and deserving 
pity.* To the one, toil is itself a pleasure. He is a hunter 
whom the sight of his game fills with delight, and makes 
insensible to fatigue. Desire sustains him, and Hope cheers 
him on. These are delights the other never knows ; for 
him, life has lost its relish ; rest is irksome to him, and la 
bor is intolerable. 

8 


86 


MEMOIRS OF 


This is no digression. He who has taken the pains to 
read the preceding paragraph, will be able to understand, 
how it happened, that even with such a master as major 
Thornton, 1 was neither happy nor content. 

It is true I was well fed, well clothed, and not severely 
worked ; and in these particulars, — as my master was fond 
of boasting, and as I have since found to be the case, — my 
situation was far superior to that of very many freemen. 
But I lacked one thing which every fi'eeman has ; and that 
one want was enough to make me miserable. I wanted 
liberty ; the liberty of laboring for myself, not for a master ; 
of pursuing my own happiness, instead of toiling at his 
pleasure, and for his gain. This liberty can lighten the 
hardest lot. He knows but little of human nature, who has 
not discovered, that to all who rise one step above the 
brutes, it is far pleasanter to starve and freeze after their 
own fashion, than to be fed and clothed and worked upon 
compulsion. 

I was wretched, — for I had no object of hope or rational 
desire. I was a slave ; and the laws held out no prospect 
of emancipation. All the efforts in the world could not 
better my condition ; all the efforts in the world could not 
prevent me from falling — ^perhaps tomorrow — into the hands 
of another master, as cruel and unreasonable as evil pas- 
sions and hard-heartedness could make him. The future 
offered only the chance of evils. 1 might starve with cold 
and hunger as well as another ; I might perish by gun-shot 
wounds, or the torture of the lash ; or be hung up, perhaps, 
without judge or jury. But of bettering my condition, I 
had neither chance, nor hopes. I was a prisoner for life ; 
at the present moment, not suffering for food or clothing, 
but without the slightest prospect of liberation ; and likely 
enough at any moment, to change my keeper, and under 
the discipline of a new jailer, to feel the pinchings of cold 
and hunger, and to tremble daily beneath the whip. I* was 
cut off and excluded from all those hopes and wishes, which 
are the chief impulses of human action. 1 could not aim 
r.o become the master of a little cottage, which, however 
numbie, 1 might call my own ; to be the lord of one poor 
acre, which however small or barren, might ?till be mine 


A FUGITIVE. 


87 


I could not marry — alas, poor Gassy! — and become the 
father of a family, with the fond hope, that when age should 
overtake me, I might still find pleasure and support, in the 
kindness of children and the sympathy of a wife. IMy 
children might be snatched from the arms of their mother, 
and sold to the slave-trader ; the mother might be sent to 
keep them company, — and I be left old, desolate, uncom- 
forted. Motives such as these, motives which strengthen 
the freeman’s arm and cheer his heart, were unfelt by me. 
I labored; — ^but it was only because I feared the lash. 
The want of willingness unnerved me, and every stroke 
cost a new effort. 

It is even true, that major Thornton’s humanity, or to 
speak more correctly, his .sense of his own interest, while it 
preserved his servants from the miseries of hunger and 
nakedness, at .the same time, exposed those among them, 
whom slavery and ignorance had not completely brutalized, 
to other and more excruciating miseries. Had we been but 
half fed and half clothed, like the servants on several of the 
neighboring plantations, we should, like them, have enjoyed 
the excitement of plunder. We should have found some 
exercise for our ingenuity, and some object about which to 
interest ourselves, in plans and stratagems for eking out our 
short allowance by the aid of theft. 

As it was, stealing was but little practised at Oakland. 
The inducement was too small, and the risk too great, — 
for detection was certain to result in being sold. Money 
was no object to us ; we could only spend it on food and 
clothes, and of these we had enough already. Whiskey 
was the only luxury we wanted ; and we could make 
enough to purchase that, without the necessity of theft. 
Mr Thornton allowed each of us a little piece of ground. 
That was customary ; — ^but what was quite contrary to 
custom, he allowed u^ time to cultivate it. He endeavored 
to stimulate our industry by the promise of buying all we 
could produce, not at a mere nominal price, as was the 
fashion on other plantations, but at its full value. 

I am sorry to say it, but it is not the less true, that major 
Thornton’s people, like all slaves who have the means and 
the opportunity, were generally drunkards. Our master 


88 


»IEMOIRS OF 


took good care that whiskey did not interfere with our work. 
To be drunk before th^ t^isk was finished was a high mis- 
demeanor. But after the day’s labor was over, we were at 
liberty to drink as much as we pleased ; — provided always, 
that it did not prevent us from turning out at daylight the 
next morning. Sunday was generally a grand Saturnalia. 

Hitherto, I had scarcely been in the habit of drinking. 
But now i began to be eager for anything which promised 
to sustain my sinking spirits, and to excite my stagnant soul. 
I soon found in whiskey, a something that seemed to answer 
the purpose. In that elevation of heart which drunkenness 
inspires, that forgetfulness of the past and the present, that 
momentary halo with which it crowns the future, I found a 
delight which I hastened to repeat, and knew not how to 
forego. Reality was to me a blank, dark and dreary. 
Action was forbidden ; desire was chained ; and hope shut 
out. I was obliged to find relief in dreams and illusions. 
Drunkenness, which degrades the freeman to a level with 
the brutes, raises, or seems to raise the slave, to the dignity 
of a man. It soon became my only pleasure, and I 
indulged it to excess. Every day, as soon as my task was 
finished, I hastened to shut myself up with my bottle. I 
drank in solitude, — for much as I loved the excitement of 
drunkenness, I could not forget its beastliness and insanity, 
and I hated to expose my folly to the sight of my fellow 
servants. But my precautions were not always successful. 
In the phrensy of excitement I sometimes forgot all my 
sober precautions ; undid the bolts I had carefully fastened ; 
and sought the company I most desired to shun. 

One Sunday, I had been drinking, till I was no longer the 
master of my own actions. I had left my house, and gone 
to seek some boon-companions with whom to protract the 
revel and increase its zest. But I was unable to distinguish 
one object from another, and after straggling off for some 
distance, I sunk down, almost insensible, upon the carriage 
way, which led towards major Thornton’s house. 

I had grown a little more sober, and was endeavoring to 
rally my thoughts and to recollect where I was, and what 
had brought me there, when I saw my master riding up the 
road, with two other gentlemen. They were all on horse- 


A FUGITIVE. 


61 ) 


back ; and as drunk as I was, I saw at a glance, that my 
master’s two companions, were very much in the same 
predicament. The manner in which they reeled backward 
and forward in their saddles was truly laughable ; and I 
expected every moment to see them fall. I made these 
observations as I lay upon the road, without once thinking 
where I was, or recollecting the danger I was in, of being 
ridden over. They had come quite near before they 
noticed me. By that time I was sitting up, and my master’s 
drunken companions took it into their heads, to jump their 
horses over me. Major Thornton did his best to prevent 
them ; one, he succeeded in stopping ; but the other evaded 
his attempt to seize the bridle, swore that the sport was too 
pretty to be lost, put spurs to his horse, and brought him up 
to the leap. 

But the horse had no fancy for this sort of sport. When 
he saw me before him, he started back, and his drunken 
rider came tumbling to the ground. The others dismounted 
and went to his assistance. Before he was well upon his 
feet, he begged major Thornton’s attention, and forthwith 
commenced a very grave lecture on the indecency of allow- 
ing servants to get drunk, and to lie about the plantation, 
— particularly across the roads, frightening gentlemen’s 
horses, and putting the necks of their riders into jeopardy. 

Especially you, major Thornton, who pretend to be a 
pattern for all of us. Yes sir, yes, if you did as you ought 
to do, every time one of the rascal fellows had the inso- 
lence to get drunk, you would tie him up and give him forty 
lashes. That’s the way I do, on my plantation.” 

My master was so very fond of setting forth his method 
of farming, and his plan of plantation-discipline, that he did 
not always stop to consider whether his auditors were drunk 
or sober. The present opportunity was too good to be lost, 
and rubbing his hands together, he answered, with a half- 
smile, and a very sagacious look, — “ But, my dear sir, you 
must know it is a part of my plan to let my ^rvants drink 
as much as they please, so that it does not interfere with 
their tasks. Poor fellows ! it serves to keep them out of 
mischief, and soon makes them so stupid they are the easiest 
creatures in the world to manage.” Here he paused a 

S# 


90 


MEMOIRS OF 


minute, and assuming the look, which a man pats on, who 
thinks he is going to urge an unanswerable argument — 
“ Besides,” he added, ‘‘ if one of these drinking fellows 
happens to take a huff and runs away, the very first thing 
he does, is to get drunk, so that you seldom have any 
difficulty in catching him.” 

Though I was still too much under the influence of 
whiskey, to be capable of much muscular motion, I had so 
far recovered my senses as to comprehend perfectly, all that 
my master was saying ; and no sooner had he finished, than, 
drunk as I was, I made a resolution to drink no more. I 
was not yet so far lost, as to be able to endure the idea, of 
being myself the instrument of my own degradation. My 
resolution was well kept ; for I have seldom tasted spirits 
since that day.^ 


CHAPTER XVI. 

It is the lot of the slave, to be exposed, in common with 
other men, to all the calamities of chance and all the 
caprices of fortune. But unlike other men, he is denied 
the consolation of struggling against them. He is hound 
hand and foot ; and his sufferings are aggravated ten fold, 
by the bitter idea that he is not allowed to help himself, or 
to make any attempt to escape the blow, which he sees 
impending over him. This idea of utter helplessness, is 
one • of the most distressing in nature : it is twin-sister to 
Despair. 

Major Thornton, by over exertion and imprudent ex- 
posure, brought on a fever, which in a short time, assumed 
a very unfavorable aspect. It was the first time he had 
been sick for many years. The alarm and even terror, 
which the news of his danger excited at Oakland, was very 
great. Every morning and evening, we collected about the 
house to learn how our master did ; and mournful were the 
faces, and sad the hearts, with which we heard the bitter 
words, no better.” The women, at Oakland, had always 


A FUGITIVE. 


91 


been treated with peculiar indulgence, such as their sex and 
weakness demands, — hut demands so often without obtain- 
ing it. Major Thornton’s illness gave an instance how full 
of gratitude is the female heart, and at what a trifling ex- 
pense, one may purchase its most zealous affection. All 
the women on the place, were anxious to be employed, in 
some way, in ministering to the comfort of their suffering 
master. The most disagreeable duties were eagerly per- 
formed ; and if ever man was tenderly and assiduously 
nursed, it was major Thornton. But all this care, all our 
sympathy, our sorrow and our terrors, were of no effect. 
The fever raged with unabated fury, and seemed to find 
new fuel in the strength of the patient’s ‘constitution. But 
that fuel was soon exhausted ; and in ten days, our master 
was no more. 

When his decease became known, we looked upon each 
other in silent consternation. A family of helpless orphans, 
from whom death had just snatched their last surviving 
parent, could not have felt a greater destitution. Tears 
rolled down the cheeks of the men ; and the lamentations 
of the women were violent and wild. His old nurse, in 
particular, wept, and would not listen to any consolation. 
She had good reason. At his father’s death she had 
been sold, with the other property, to satisfy the creditors. 
But major Thornton had re-purchased her, out of his very 
first earnings ; he had made her the head-servant of his 
household, and had always treated her with great tender- 
ness. The old woman loved him like her own child, and 
lamented her dear son Charley,” as she called him, with 
all the pathetic energy of a widowed and childless mother. 

We all attended the funeral, and followed our dead 
master to the grave. The hollow sound of the earth as it • 
fell upon the coffin, was echoed back from every bosom ; 
and when this last sad office was finished, we stood over 
the spot, and wept together. Doubt not the sincerity 
of our sorrow ! It was for ourselves we were lamenting. 

Major Thornton was never married ; and he left no chil- 
dren whose rights the laws acknowledged. If he had in- 
tended to make a will, his sudden death prevented him ; 
and his property passed to a troop of cousins for whom, 


9:2 


MExMOIRS OF 


I suspect, he did not entertain any great affection. At all 
events, I had never seen any of them at Oakland, nor could 
I learn from the other servants, that either of them had 
ever made a visit there. It was thus that we became the 
property of strangers, who had never seen us, and whom 
we had never seen. 

These heirs-at-law were poor as well as numerous, and 
seemed very eager to turn all the property into money, so 
as to get their several shares with the least possible delay. 
An order of court, or whatever the legal process might be 
called, was soon obtained ; and the sale of the slaves was 
advertized to take place at the county court-house. The 
agent to whom the care of the estate was intrusted, made 
the necessary preparations. Of course, it was not thought 
expedient that we should know what was going on, or what 
our new owners intended to do with us. The secret was 
carefully kept lest some of us should run away. 

The day before that which had been appointed for the 
sale, we were collected together. The able bodied men 
and women were handcuffed and chained in a string. A 
few old grey headed people and the younger children were 
carried in a cart. The rest of us were driven along like 
cattle — men, women and children together. Three fellows 
on horseback, with the usual equipment of long whips, 
served at once, as guards and drivers. 

I shall not attempt to describe our affliction. It would 
be but the repetition of an oft-told tale. Who has not read 
of slave-traders on the coast of Africa? Whose heart 'has 
not ached at picturing the terrors and despair of the kid- 
napped victims ? Our case was much the same. Many 
of us had been born and reared at Oakland, and all looked 
‘ upon it as a home, — nay more, as a city of refuge, where 
we had always been safe from gratuitous insults and aggres- 
sions. From this home, we were now snatched away, 
without a moment’s warning ; and were driven chained to 
the slave-market to be sold to the highest bidder. 

Is it strange that we were reluctant to go ? Had we 
been setting out, of our own accord, to seek otrr fortunes, 
we could not have broken, all at once, all the ties that 
botind us to Oakland, without some throbs of natural grief 


A FUGITIVE. 


93 


What then, must have been our anguish to leave it as 
we did ? 

But the tears of the men, the sobs of the women, and 
the cries and tensors of the poor children, availed us nothing. 
Our conductors cracked their whips, and made a jest of our 
lamentations. Our sorrowful procession moved slowly on ; 
and many a sad lingering look, we cast behind us. We 
said nothing ; and our melancholy reflections were only 
interrupted by the curses, shouts, and loud laughter of our 
drivers. 

We lodged, that night, by the road side ; our drivers 
sleeping and keeping watch by turns. The next day, we 
reached the county court-house, and at the appointed hour, 
the sale began. The company was not very numerous, 
and the bidders seemed extremely shy. Many of our late 
master’s neighbors were present. One of them remarked 
that several of us were fine stout fellows, but, for his part, 
he should be afraid to buy any of the Thornton hands, for 
we had been so spoiled by our late master’s foolish indul- 
gence, that one of us would be enough to spread discontent 
through a whole neighborhood. This speech was received 
with evident applause, and it had its intended effect. The 
auctioneer did his best, and harangued most eloquently upon 
our healthy, sound and plump condition. As to the over- 
indulgence, that gentleman speaks about,” he added, “ a 
good cow-hide and strict discipline will soon bring them 
into proper subordination ; — and from what I have heard 
of that gentleman’s own management, he is the very person 
who ought to buy them.” A slight titter ran through the 
company, at this sally of the auctioneer’s, but it did not 
seem to make the bidding much brisker. We went off at 
very moderate prices. Most of the younger men and women , 
and a large proportion of the children were bought by a 
slave-trader, who had come on purpose to attend the sale. 
It was very difficult to get a bid for several of the old people. 
Mr Thornton’s nurse, who, as I have mentioned, had been 
his house-keeper, and a person of no little consequence at 
Oakland, was knocked off for twenty dollars. She was 
bought by an old fellow, well known in the neighborhood 
for iiis cruelty to his servants. He shook his head as the 


94 


MEMOIRS OF 


auctioneer’s hammer stmck the table, grinned a significant 
smile, and said he believed the girl was yet able to handle 
a hoe ; — any how, he would get one summer’s work out of 
her. The old lady had scarcely held uj3 her head since 
the death of her master ; but she forgot all her sorrows, she 
forgot even to deplore the lot that seemed to await her, in 
her anger at being sold at so small a price. She turned to 
her purchaser, and with an indignant air, told him that she 
was both younger and stronger than folks thought for, and 
assured him that he had made the best bargain of any of 
the company. The old fellow chuckled, but said nothing. 
It was easy to read his thoughts. He was evidently re- 
solving to hold the old woman to her word. 

Some of the old and decrepit slaves could not be sold at 
all. They were not worth purchasing, and nobody would 
rjj^ake an offer. I do not know what became of them. 

The slave-dealer who had purchased most of the children, 
declined buying such of the mothers as were past the age 
of child-bearing. The parting of these mothers from their 
children, was a new scene of misery and lamentation. The 
poor things, snatched a little while before, from the home 
of their birth and their infancy, and now, torn from the 
mothers that bore and nursed them, clasped their little hands, 
and shrieked with all the unrestrained vehemence of infant 
agony. The mothers wept too ; but their grief was more 
subdued. There was one old woman, the mother, she said, 
of fifteen children. One little girl, about ten or twelve 
years old, was all that remained to her. The others had 
been sold and scattered, she knew not whither. She was 
now to part from her youngest and only remaining child. 
The little girl clung to her mother’s dress with all the terror 
of one who was about to be kidnapped, and her screams 
and cries might have touched a heart of stone. Her new 
master snatched the child away, hit her a cut with his whip, 
and bade her hold her “ cursed clatter.” A slave-trader, 
however he may have the exterior of a gentleman, is in fact, 
the same ferocious barbarian, whether on the coast of Guinea, 
or in the heart of the ‘Ancient Dominion.’ 

When our new master had completed his purchases, he 
prepared to set out with his drove. He was one of a 


THE LAST DAUGHTER. Page 1)4. 








-j 








* 










' I 





t 


*. 






> 

« 


i 


t 


t 



. r 


r • 

f< 


r- 


V. 








> ' 


» '.‘ «. 



'I 


• . ■ f4*-, 

'.’:^ ■- 

•-•• I 



A FUGITIVE. 


95 


slave-dealing firm, whose head quarters were at the city of 
Washington, tlie seat of the federal government, and the 
capital of the United States of America. It’ was to this 
place that he intended to carry us. The whole purchase 
was about forty head, consisting in nearly equal proportions 
of men, women and children. We were joined in couples 
by iron collai’s about our necks, which were connected by 
a link of iron. To these connecting links, a heavy chain 
was fastened, extending from one end of the drove to the 
other. Besides all this, the right and left hands of every 
couple were fastened together by hand-cuffs, and another 
chain passed along these fastenings. The collars about our 
necks, with their connecting chain, might have been thought 
perhaps, under ordinary circumstances, a sufficient security; 
but as our new master had heard from major Thornton’s 
neighbors, who were present at the sale, that we were “ a 
set of very dangerous fellows,” he thought it best, as he 
said, to omit no reasonable means of security. 

The drove was presently put in motion. Our purchas- 
ers, with two or three assistants, rode beside us on horseback, 
armed with whips, as usual. The journey was slow, sad 
and wearisome. We travelled without any good will ; the 
poor children harassed with the weight of their chains, and 
unaccustomed to fatigue ; and all of us, faint for want of 
food ; — for our new master was an economist, who spent as 
little on the road, as possible. 

I will not dwell upon the tedious monotony of our suffer- 
ings and our journey. Suffice it to say, that after travelling 
for several days, we crossed the noble and wide-spreading 
Potomac, and late at night, began to enter the federal city. 
Perhaps I ought to say, the plaae where the federal city 
was to be, — for Washington, at that time, seemed only a 
straggling village, scattered over a wide extent of ground, 
and interspersed with deserted fields, overgrown with bush- 
es. There were some indications however, of the future 
metropolis. The Capitol, though unfinished, was rearing 
Its spacious walls in the moonlight, and gave promise of a 
magnificent edifice. Lights gleamed from the windows. 
The Congress perhaps was in session. I gazed at the 
building with no little emotion. This,” said I to myself, 


96 


MEMOIRS OF 


“ IS the head quarters of a great nation, the spot in which 
Its concentrated wisdom is collected, to devise laws for the 
benefit of the whole community, — the just and equal laws 
of a free people and a great democracy ! ” — I was going on 
with this mental soliloquy, when the iron collar about my 
neck touched a place from which it had rubbed the skin; 
and as I started with the pain, the rattling of chains remind- 
ed me, that ‘ these just and equal laws of a free people and 
a great democracy’ did not avail to rescue a million* of 
bondmen from hopeless servitude ; and the cracking of our 
drivers’ whips told too plainly that within a stone’s throw 
of the Temple of Liberty — ^nay, under its very porticos — 
the most brutal, odious and detestable tyranny found none 
to rebuke, or to forbid it. What sort of liberty is it whose 
chosen city is a slave-market? — and what that freedom, 
which permits the bravado insolence of a slave-trading aris- 
tocracy to lord it in the very halls of her legislation ? 

We passed up the street which led by the Capitol, and 
presently arrived at the establishment of Savage, Brothers 
& Co, our new masters. Half an acre of ground, more or 
less, was enclosed with a wall some twelve feet high, well 
armed at the top, with iron spikes and pieces of broken 
bottles. In the centre of the enclosure, was a low brick 
building of no great size, with a few narrow, grated win- 
dows, and a stout door, well secured with bars and pad- 
locks. This was the establishment used by Messrs Savage, 
Brothers &: Co as a ware-house, in which they stowed 
away such slaves, as they purchased from time to time, in 
the neighboring country, to be kept till they were ready to 
send them off in droves, or to ship them to the South. In 
common with all the slave-trading gentry, IMessrs Savage, 

* The slaves in the United States are now near three millions and 
a half. It ought perhaps to be added, that by the federal constitution 
the general government has no right to interfere with the question of 
slavery in the States. The legislature of each State is the sole judge 
of that question, within its own limits. Slavery however, is still 
tolerated within the District of Columbia, which includes the city of 
Washington, over which Congress has an exclusive right of legislation. 
It is to be hoped that the people of the free States will not be deterred 
by the insolent and ferocious spirit of the slave-holders, from doing 
themselves the justice to abolish slavery wherever it is within their 
power. Editor. 


A FUGITIVE. 


97 


Brothers & Co had the free use of the city prison ; but this 
was not large enough for the scale on which they carried 
on' operations ; so they had built a prison of their own. It 
was under the management of a regular jailer, and was very 
niucli like any other jail. The slaves were allowed the 
liberty of the yard during the day time ; but at sunset, they 
were all locked up promiscuously in the prison. This was 
small and ill-ventilated ; and the number that was forced- 
into it, was sometimes very great. While I was confined 
there, the heat and stench were often intolerable ; and 
many a morning, I came out of it, with a burning thirst and 
a, high fever. 

The states of Maryland and Virginia claim the honor of 
having exerted themselves for the abolition of the African 
slave-trade. It is true they were favorable to that measure, 
— and they had good reasons of their own for being so. 
They gained the credit of humanity, by the same vote that 
secured them the monopoly of a domestic trade in slaves, 
which bids fair to rival any traffic ever prosecuted on the 
coast of Africa. The African traffic, they have declared to 
be piracy, while the domestic slave-trade flourishes in the 
heart of their own territories, a just, legal and honorable 
commerce ! 

The District of Columbia, which includes the city of 
Washington, and which is situated between the two states 
above mentioned, has become, from the convenience of its 
situation, and other circumstances, the centre of these slave- 
trading operations, — an honor which it shares however, with 
Richmond and Baltimore, the chief' towns of Virginia and 
Maryland. The lands of these two states have been ex- 
hausted by a miserable and inefficient system of cultivation, 
such as ever prevails where farms are large, and the laborers 
enslaved. Their produce is the same with the productions 
of several of the free states north and west of them ; and 
they are every day, sinking faster and faster, under the 
competition of free labor to whicli they are exposed. 

Many a Virginian planter can only bring his revenue 
even with his expenditures, by selling every year, a slave 
or two. This practice, jocularly, but at the same.Unie 
significantly known, as ^eating a negro’ — a phrase worthy 
9 


98 


MEMOIRS OF 


of slave-holding humanity — is becoming every day, more 
and more common. A very large number of planters have 
ceased to raise crops with the expectation of profit. .They 
endeavor to make the produce of their lands pay their cur- 
rent expenses ; but all their hopes of gain are confined to 
the business of raising slaves for the southern market ; and 
that market is as regularly supplied with slaves from Vir- 
ginia, as with mules and horses from Kentucky. 

But the slave-trade in America, as well as in Africa, 
carries with it the curse of depopulation ; and, together 
with the emigration which is constantly going on, has 
already unpeopled great tracts of country in the lower part 
of Virginia, and is fast restoring the first seats of Anglo- 
American populatjion to all their original wildness and 
solitude. Whole counties almost, are grown up in useless 
and impenetrable thickets, already retenanted by deer and 
other wild game, their original inhabitants. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

We were driven into the prison-yard, through a stout 
gate well studded with iron nails. ITie heavy padlocks of 
the prison-door were unfastened, and we were thrust in, 
without further ceremony. A faint glimmer of moon-light 
stole in at the narrow and grated windows of the prison ; 
but it was some time before I was able to distinguish one 
object from another. When at length, my eyes had ac- 
commodated themselves to the faintness of the light, I 
found myself crowded into the midst of perhaps a hundred 
human beings, — ^most of them young men and women 
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, — closely 
packed on the bare floor. 

A considerable number started up at our entrance, and 
began to crowd about us, and to inquire who we were, 
and whence we came. They seemed glad of anything to 
break the monotony of their confinement. But wearied 
and fatigued, we were in no humor for talking ; and sink- 


A FUGITIVE. 


99 


ing down upon the floor of our prison, notwithstanding the 
poisonous stench, and the confined and impure atmosphere, 
we were soon buried in profound slumbers. Sleep is the 
dearest solace of the wretched ; and there is this sweet 
touch of mercy in it, that it ever closes the eyes of the 
oppressed, more willingly than those of the oppressor. I 
hardly think that any member of the firm of Savage, Broth- 
ers & Co slept so soundly that night, as did the most 
unquiet of their newly purchased victims. 

Day came — ^the prison-door was unlocked, and we were 
let out into the enclosure about it. The scanty allowance 
of corn-bread which the penuriousness of our wealthy but 
economical masters allowed us, was doled out to each. My 
meal finished, I sat down upon the ground, and observed 
the scene about me. With a few exceptions, the prisoners 
were collected in groups, some containing two or three, and 
others a much larger number. The men were more numer- 
ous than the women, though the females had received a 
considerable addition from our party. The acquaintance 
of these new comers was eagerly sought for, and they were 
constantly receiving solicitations to enter into temporary 
unions, to last while the parties remained together. Most 
of the women whom we found in the prison, had already 
formed connections of this sort. 

These courtships, if so they should be called, were still 
going on, when a tall young fellow, with a very quizical face, 
produced a three-stringed fiddle, and after preluding for a 
few moments, struck up a lively tune. The sound of the 
music soon drew a large group about him, who provided 
themselves with partners and began a dance. As the fid- 
dler wEfrmed to his business, he played faster and faster; and 
the dancers, amidst laughs and shouts and boisterous merri- 
ment, did their best to keep up with the tune. 

It is thus that men, whenever their natural sources of 
enjoyment fail them, betake themselves to artificial excite- 
ments. Too often, we sing and dance, not because we are 
merrv, but in the hope to become so ; and merriment itself 
is seldomer the expression and the evidence of pleasure, 
than the disguise of weariness and pain, — the hollow echo 
of an aching heart. 


100 


MEMOIRS OF 


But the entire company did not join the dancers. As it 
happened, it was Sunday; and a part of them seemed to 
entertain conscientious scruples about dancing on that, and 
for aught I know, upon any other day. The more sober 
part of the company gradually collected together in the op- 
posite corner of the prison-yard ; and a sedate young man, 
with a handsome and intelligent face, mounted upon the 
head of an empty barrel which happened to be standing 
there, and taking a hymn-book from his pocket, struck up 
a Methodist psalm. His voice was sweet and clear, and 
his singing far from disagreeable. He was soon joined by 
several others ; and as the chorus swelled, the sound of the 
psalmody almost drowned the scraping of the fiddle and the 
laughter of the dancers. I observed too, that several of the 
dancing party, Cast their eyes, from time to time wistfully 
towards the singers ; and before the psalm was half finished, 
several of the females had stolen softly away, and mingled 
in the group collected about the preacher. The"^ sieging 
being ended, he began to pray. His hands were clasped, 
and raised, and he spoke with a ready fluency, and a 
natural earnestness and unction, not always heard from a 
regular clergyman in a cushioned pulpit. Tears ran down 
many a face ; and sighs and groans almost drowned the 
voice of the speaker. These perhaps, were mere practised 
responses, as artificial, and as little sincere, as the drawl of 
the parish clerk in the English ehurch service. And yet in 
some cases, they had every appearance of being genuine 
bursts of natural feeling, — an involuntary tribute to the elo- 
quence and fervor of the speaker. 

Next followed the exhortation. The text was from Job ; 
and the preacher began upon the trite subject of patience. 
But like all ignorant and illiterate speakers, he soon desert- 
ed his original topic, and ran on from one thing to another, 
with very little of method or connection. Now and then, 
some sparks of sense were struck out ; but they were speed- 
ily quenched in a flood of absurdity. It was a strange 
farrago ; but it was delivered with a volubility, an earnest- 
ness and a force, which produced a strong effect upon the 
nearers. It was not long before he had worked them up to 
a pitch of excitement, which far surpassed that of th^ 


A FUGITIVE. 


101 


dancers in the opposite comer. Indeed, the dancing group 
grew thinner and thinner, and the squeak of the fiddle 
sounded weaker and weaker, till at last the fiddler threw 
down his instrument, and with his remaining adherents 
hastened to swell the audience of a performer whose powers 
so much out-matched his own. 

As the sermon proceeded, the groans and cries of mercy 
and amen, grew louder and more frequent; and several, 
overcome by their feelings, or wishing, or affecting to be so, 
fell flat upon the ground, and screamed and shouted as if 
they were possessed by evil spirits. So strong was the 
contagion, and so powerful the sympathetic infectiousness 
of this spiritual intoxication, that I, a mere looker on, felt a 
strong impulse to rush among the crowd, and to shriek and 
shout with the rest. The paroxysm was now at its height, 
and the speaker was almost exhausted by his vehement 
gesticulation, when stamping his foot, with more than com- 
mon eiG^rgy — he burst in the head of the barrel and tumbled 
headlong among his auditors. 

This unlucky accident instantly converted the cries and 
groans of his hearers, into shouts of irrepressible laughter ; 
and they seemed to pass all at once, from a state of the ut- 
most terror and solemnity, into outrageous and uncontrollable 
merriment. The fiddler crept out from amidst the hurly 
burly, caught up his fiddle, and struck up a lively air, — I 
forget the name of it, but I recollect very well that it con- 
tained some allusion to the disaster of his rival. The dance 
was renewed ; while the preacher, with a few of his more 
attached hearers, slunk away mortified and disheartened. 
The dancers grew more boisterous, and the fiddler played 
his best ; till at last the party had fairly tired themselves 
out, and were too much exhausted to keep it up any 
longer. 

Men born and bred in slavery, are not men but children. 
Their faculties are never permitted to unfold themselves ; 
and it is the aim of their masters, and the necessary effect 
of their condition, to keep them in a state of perpetual im- 
becility. Tyranny is ever hostile to every species of men- 
tal developement ; for a state of ignorance involves of 
necessity, a state of degradation, and of helplessness. 


102 


MEMOIRS OF 


I soon made myself acquainted with a number of my 
fellow prisoners, and entered into conversation with them. 
Some of them had been in the jail a fortnight, and others 
longer. I presently discovered that they considered their 
confinement as a sort of holy day. They had nothing to 
do ; and not to be compelled to work seemed, for them, 
the supreme idea of happiness. As to being confined within 
the walls of a prison ; they had the liberty of the yard, and 
it was just as agreeable being shut up within four brick 
walls, as to be prisoner on a plantation, forbidden to go be- 
yond the line of its zig-zag fences. Then they had no 
overseer to harass them, and nothing to do but to dance 
and sleep. Nothing was wanted but a little whiskey, and 
even that was not always wanting. They seemed anxious 
to drown all memory of the past, and all dread of the fu- 
ture, and to bask without concern, in the sunshine of their 
present felicity. 

m 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

I HAD been in the jail ten days or a fortnight, when 
' Messrs Savage, Brothers & Co selected from among their 
chattels a cargo of slaves for the Charleston market. I was 
one of the number ; and with, some fifty othei's, was loaded 
on board a small vessel bound for that port. The captain’s 
name was Jonathan Osborne. He was a citizen of Boston, 
and the vessel, the brig Two Sallys, belonged to that port, 
and was the property of a rich and respectable merchant. 

The people of the northern States of the American 
Union, talk finely upon the* subject of slavery, and express 
a very proper indignation at its hoiTors. Yet while the 
African slave-trade was permitted, their merchants carried 
it on ; and these same 'merchants do not always refuse to 
employ their vessels in the domestic slave-trade, a traflic not 
one iota less base and* detestable. 

Northern statesmen have permitted slavery where no 
constitutional objections prevented them from abolishing it ; 


A FUGITIVE. 


103 


the courts and lawyers of the North scrupulously fulfil to 
the utmost letter, the constitutional obligation to restore to 
the Southern master, the victim who has escaped his grasp, 
and fled to the ‘ free States,’ in the vain hope of protection ; 
whilst the whole North looks calmly on, and tamely suffers 
the Southern slave-holders to violate all the provisions of 
that same constitution, and to imprison, torture, and put to 
death, the citizens of the North without judge or jury, 
whenever they imagine that such severities can contribute, 
in the slightest degree, to the security of their slave-holding 
tyranny. Nay more ; many of the Northern aristocrats, in 
the energy of their hatred of democratical equality, seem 
almost ready to envy, while they affect to deplore, the con- 
dition of their Southern brethren. And yet the northern 
States of the Union dare to assert that they are imdefiled 
by the stain of slavery. It is a vain, false boast. They 
are partners in the wrong. The blood of the slave is on 
their hands, and is dripping in red and gory drops, fi'om the 
skirts of their garments. 

Before leaving the prison, we were supplied with hand- 
cuffs, those usual badges and emblems of servitude, and 
having reached the wharf, we were crammed together, into 
the hold of the vessel, so close that we had hardly room to 
move, and not room enough either to lie or sit with comfort. 
The vessel got under way soon after we came on board, 
and proceeded down the river. Once or twice a day, we 
were suffered to come on deck, and to breathe the fresh air 
for a few minutes ; but we were soon remanded to our dun- 
geon in the hold. The mate of the vessel seemed to be a 
good natured young man, and disposed to render our con 
dition as comfortable as possible ; but the captain was a 
savage tyrant, worthy of the business in which he was en- 
gaged. 

We had been on our voyage a day or two, and had 
already cleared the river, and were standing down the bay, 
whenT became excessively sick. A burning fever seemed 
raging in my veins. It was after sunset ; the hatches were 
closed down ; and the heat of the narrow hold in which 
we were confined, and which was more than half filled up 
with boxes and barrels, became intolerable. I knocked 


104 


MEMOIRS OF 


against the deck, and called aloud for air and water. It 
was the mate’s watch. He came foiward to ascertain what 
was the matter, and bade the men unfasten the hatches and 
lift me upon deck. I snatched the basin of water which 
he gave me, and though brackish and warm, it seemed to my 
feverish taste the most delicious of drinks. I drained it to 
the bottom and called for more ; but the mate, who feared 
perhaps that excessive drinking might aggravate my disor- 
der, refused this request. I wanted air as much as water. 
This he did not refuse me ; and I was lying on the deck, 
imbibing at every pore the cool breeze of the evening, when 
the captain came up the companion-way. 

He no sooner saw the hatches off, and me lying on the 
deck, than he stepped up to his mate, with a clinched fist 
and a face distorted with passion, and addressed him with 

How dare you, sir, take off the hatches after sundown, 
without my orders ? ” 

The mate attempted an apology, and began with saying 
that I was taken suddenly sick, and had called for assistance ; 
but without waiting to hear him out, the brutal captain 
rushed by, and hitting me a kick, precipitated me headlong, 
into the hold, upon the heads of my companions. Without 
stopping to inquire, whether or not rhy neck was broken, 
he bade his men replace and secure the hatches. Luckily 
I sustained but little injury ; though I came within an inch 
of having my skull broken against one of the beams. The 
water I had drank, and the cool air I had breathed, abated 
my fever, and I soon began to grow better. 

In the course of the next day, we passed the capes of the 
Chesapeake, and entered the great Atlantic. We stood to 
the southward and eastward, and were making rapid way, 
when it came on to blow a furious gale. The tossing and 
pitching of the ship was temble indeed to us poor prisoners, 
confined in the dark hold, and expecting, at every burst of 
thunder, that the vessel was breaking in pieces. The storm 
continued to increase. The noise and tumult on deck, the 
creaking of the rigging, the cries of the seamen, and the 
sound of cracking spars and splitting canvass, added to our 
terror Pretty soon, we found that the hold was filling with 
water, and an alarm was given that the vessel had sprung 


A FUGITIVE. 


105 


a-leak. The hatches were opened, and we were called on 
deck. Our hand-cuffs were knocked off, and we were set 
to work at the pumps. 

I could not tell whether it were night or morning ; for 
the gale had now lasted a good while, and since it began, 
we had not been suffered to come on deck. However it 
was not totally dark. A dim and horrid glimmer, just suf- 
ficient to betray our situation, and more terrible perhaps 
than total darkness, was hovering over the ocean. At a 
distance, the huge black waves, crested with pale blue foam, 
seemed to move on like monsters of the deep ; nor when 
nearer, did they lose any of their terrors. Now we sunk 
into a horrid gulf, between two watery precipices, which 
swelled on either side, black, and frowning, and ready to 
devour us ; and now, lifted on the top of a lofty wave, we 
viewed all around, a wild and fearful waste of dark and 
stormy waters. It was a terrible sight for one who had 
never seen the sea before ; and as I gazed upon it, half stu- 
pefied with terror, little did I think that this same fierce and 
raging element, was to prove hereafter, my best and surest 
friend ! 

The brig was almost a total wreck. Her foremast was 
gone by the board ; and she was lying to on the starboard 
tack, under a close reefed main-top-sail. These are terms 
which, at that time, I had never heard. It was long after- 
wards that I learned to use them. But the whole scene 
remains as distinct upon my memory as if it had been paint- 
ed there. 

Notwithstanding all our efforts, the leak gained upon us ; 
and the captain soon made up his mind that it would be im- 
possible to keep the vessel afloat. Accordingly he made 
his preparations for quitting her. He and his mates were 
armed with swords and pistols ; and cutlasses were put into 
the hands of two or three of the crew. The long boat had 
been washed overboard ; but they had succeeded in secur- 
ing the jolly boat, which they now lowered away and 
dropped into the water under the vessel’s lee. The crew 
were already embarking, before we well understood what 
they were about ; — ^but as soon as we comprehended that 
they were going to desert the ship, we rushed franticly for- 


106 


MEMOIRS OF 


ward, and demanded to be taken on board. This they had 
expected, and they were prepared for it. Three or four 
pistol shots were fired among us, and several of us were 
severely wounded by the sailors’ cutlasses. At the same 
time, they cried to us to stand back, and they would take 
us on board as soon as all things were ready. Terrified 
and confused, we stood a moment doubting what to do. 
The sailors improved this interval to jump on board, — 
Cast off” shouted the captain, — ^the seamen bent to their 
oars, and the boat was fast quitting the vessel, before we 
had recovered from our momentary hesitation. 

We raised a shout, or rather a scream of terror, at finding 
ourselves thus deserted ; and three or four poor wretches, 
on the impulse of the moment, sprang into the water, in the 
hope of reaching the boat. All but one sunk instantly in 
the boiling surge ; he, a man of herculean frame, springing 
with all the effort of a death-struggle, was carried far beyond 
the rest, and rising through the billows, found himself just 
behind the boat. He stretched out his hand and caught 
the rudder. The captain was steering. He drew a pistol 
and fired it at the head of the swimmer. We heard a 
scream above all the noise of the tempest. It was only for 
a moment ; he sunk, and we saw him no more. 

It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the terror 
and confusion which now prevailed on board. The women, 
now screaming, now praying, were frantic with fear. Four 
or five poor fellows lay about the deck bleeding and des- 
•perately wounded. Death seemed to ride upon the storm, 
and to summon his victims. The vessel still lay with her 
head to windward ; but the spray dashed over her continu- 
ally, and every now and then, she shipped a sea which set 
the decks a-float and drenched us in salt water. It occurred 
to me, that unless the pumps were kept going, the vessel 
would soon fill and carry us to the bottom. I called about 
me, such of the men as seemed to be most in their senses, 
and endeavored to explain to them our situation ; but they 
were stupefied with terror, and would not, or could not, un- 
derstand me. As a last resource, I rushed forward, crying 
— “ Pump my hearties, pump for your lives.” This was 
the phrase which the captain and his mates had continually 


A FUGITIVE. 


107 


repeated, as they stood over us, and directed our labor. The 
poor creatures seemed to obey as if instinctively, this voice 
of command. They collected about me and began to work 
the pumps. If it had no other good effect, at least it served 
to call off our attention from the horrors with which we 
were surrounded. We plied our work till one of the pumps 
was broken and the other choked and rendered useless. By 
this time the storm had abated, and the vessel, notwithstand- 
ing all our fears to the contrary, still rode the waves. 

It grew lighter by degrees. Presently the clouds began 
to break away, and to drive in huge, misty masses along 
the sky. Occasionally the sun broke out ; and after a con- 
siderable dispute, whether it were rising or setting, we con- 
cluded it must be some four or five hours past sunrise. 

As soon as the women had recovered from the first par- 
oxysm of their terror, they gave such care as they could, to 
the poor sufferers, who had been wounded. They had 
bound up their wounds, and had collected them together on 
the quarter deck. One poor fellow who had been shot 
through the body with a pistol ball, was much worse hurt 
than the others. His wife was supporting his head on her 
lap, and was trying to prevent the pitching of the vessel 
from aggravating his sufferings. She had been standing by 
him, or rather clinging to him, at the moment he was 
wounded. She had caught him in her arms as he fell, had 
dragged him from the press, and from that moment seemed 
to forget all the horrors of our situation, in her incessant 
efforts to soothe his pains. Her affectionate care had 
proved of little avail. The struggle was now almost over. 
In a little while, he expired in her arms. When she found 
that he was dead, her grief, which she had controlled and 
suppressed so long, burst forth in all its energy. Her female 
companions gathered about her, — but the poor woman was 
beyond the reach of consolation. 

Some of us now ventured below, and took the liberty of 
overhauling the steward’s stores. Every thing was more or 
less damaged with salt water ; but we lighted upon a cask 
or two of bread, which was tolerably dry, and which suf- 
ficed to furnish us a sumptuous repast. 

We had not finished it, before we discovered a vessel 


108 


MEMO I as OF 


Standing towards us. As she approached, we waved frag- 
ments of the tattered sails, and shouted for assistance. 
Having run down pretty near us, she hove to, and sent a 
boat on board. When the boat’s crew had mounted over 
the brig’s side, they seemed utterly amazed at the scene 
which her decks presented. I stepped forward, and ex- 
plained to the officer the nature of our situation ; that we 
were a cargo of slaves bound from Washington to Charles- 
ton, and that the vessel and her lading had been deserted 
by the crew ; that contrary to every expectation, we had 
succeeded in keeping her afloat, but that the pumps were 
out of order and she was again filling. 

The mate hastened back to his own ship and soon re- 
turned with the captain and the carpenter. After’examin- 
ing and consulting together, they determined to put a part 
of their own crew on board the brig, and to navigate her 
into Norfolk, to which port they were bound, and which 
was the nearest harbor. The carpenter was put to work 
stopping her leaks and repairing her pumps. Her new 
crew set up a jury foremast, out of such materials as they 
found on board. She was soon in sailing order, and they 
shook the reefs out of her main-top-sail and put her before 
the wind. 

The vessel which had rescued us, was the Arethusa, of 
New York, Charles Parker, master; and lest we might 
need assistance, she slackened sail and kept us company. 
Before night we made the land, and a pilot came on board. 
The next morning we entered the harbor of Norfolk. The 
vessel had scarcely touched the wharf, before we were hur- 
ried away, and locked up in the city jail for safe keeping. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

We remained in jail some three weeks, before anybody 
condescended to inform us why we were kept there, or what 
was to become of us. We now learned that captain Par- 
ker and his crew, had libelled the Two Sallys and her cargo 


A FUGITIVE. 


109 


for salvage ; and that the Court had ordered the libelled 
property to be sold at auction, for the joint benefit of the 
owners and salvors. This was all Greek to us. 1 had not 
the most distant idea what was meant by ‘libelling for 
salvage,’ and I hardly think that any of the others under- 
stood it better than I. Nobody took the trouble to explain 
it to us ; it was enough for us to understand, that we were 
to be sold ; the why and the wherefore, it was thought of 
no consequence for slaves to know. ^ 

As 1 had already been twice sold at public auction, the 
thing had lost its interest and its novelty. I was tired of 
the confinement of the prison ; and as 1 knew that I must 
be sold at last, I was as ready to take my chance now 
as ever. 

The sale was much like other sales of slaves. There 
was only one circumstance about it, that seemed worthy of 
particular notice. The wounded men, though they were 
not yet cured, indeed two of the four were hardly thought 
out of danger, were to be sold among the rest. “ Damaged 
articles,” the auctioneer observed, “which he was willing to 
dispose of at a great discount.” The four were offered in 
one lot, — “ Like so many broken frying pans,” said one of 
the spectators, “but for my part, I have no fancy for specu- 
lating either in broken frying pans, wounded slaves, or sick 
horses.” A physician who was present, was advised to 
purchase. “If they should happen to die,” said his adviser, 
“ they would be quite useless to any body else, but you 
might find some use for their dead bodies.” Various other 
jests equally brilliant and pointed, were thrown out by others 
of the company, and were received with shouts of laughter 
that contrasted a little harshly, with the sad, woe-begone 
faces, and low moans of the wounded men, who were 
brought to the place of sale on little pallets, and who lay 
upon the ground, the very pictures of sickness and distress. 

This jocular humor had reached a high pitch, when it 
was rather suddenly checked, by a tall fine looking man, 
who had more the air and manners of a gentleman than the 
greater part of the company. He observed, with a tone 
and a look of some severity, that in his opinion, selling men 
upon their death-beds was no laughing matter. He imme- 
10 


no 


MEMOIRS OF 


diately made a bid quite beyond any thing that had been 
offered, and the auctioneer pronounced him to be the pur- 
chaser. I hoped this same gentleman might have purchased 
me also ; but as soon as he had given some directions about 
the removal of the wounded men, he left the place of sale. 
Perhaps I had no reason to regret it. This gentleman, for 
aught I could tell, had acted, as a hundred other slave- 
buyers might have done, from a momentary impulse of 
humanity, which disgusted him, it is true, with the brutality 
of the rest of the company, but which in all likelihood, was 
neither strong nor steady enough to render his treatment of 
his servants much different from that of his neighbors. 
Such temporary fits of humanity and good nature, are occa- 
sionally felt by every body; but they are no guarantee 
whatever, against an habitual disregard of the rights and 
feelings of thbse, who are not allowed to protect themselves, 
and who are protected neither by the laws nor by public 
opinion. 

I was purchased by an agent of Mr James Carleton, of 
Caiieton-Hall, in one of the northern counties of North- Car- 
olina ; and was presently sent off with two or three of my 
companions, for the plantation of our new master. 

After a journey of four or five days, we arrived at Carle- 
ton-Hall. It was like the residences of so many other 
American planters, a mean house, with no great signs about 
it, either of ornament or comfort. At a short distance from 
tlie House, was the servants’ quarter, a miserable collection 
of ruinous cabins, crowded together without any order, and 
almost concealed in the vigorous "growth of weeds, that 
sprung up around and among them. 

Soon after our arrival, we were carried into the presence 
of our new master, who examined us one by one, and in- 
quired into our several capabilities. Having learned that I 
had been raised a house-servant, and being pleased, as he 
said, with my manners and appearance, he told me he 
would take me into the house to supply ^the place of his 
man John, who had become so confirmed a drunkard, that 
he had been obliged to turn him into the field. 

I was well enough pleased with this arrangement ; for in 
general, those slaves who are house servants, are infinitely 


A FUGITIVE. 


Ill 


better off than those who are employed in field labor. 
They are better fed, and better clothed, and their work is 
much lighter. They are sure of the crumbs that fall from 
their master’s table ; and as the master’s eyes and those of 
his guests, would be offended by a display of dirt and rags 
in the dining room, house servants are comfortably clothed, 
not so, much, it is true, on their own account, as for the 
gratification of their owner’s vanity. As it is a matter of 
ostentation to have a house full of servants, the labor be- 
comes light when divided among so many. Sufficient food, 
comfortable clothing, and light work are not to be despised ; 
but the circumstance which principally contributes to make 
the condition of the house servant more tolerable than that 
of the field hand, is of a different description. Men, and 
especially women and children, cannot have any thing 
much about them, be it a dog, a cat, or even a slave, 
without insensibly contracting some interest in it and regard 
for it ; and it thus happens that a family servant often 
becomes quite a favorite, and is .at length regarded with 
a feeling that bears some faint and distant resemblance to 
family affection. ^ 

■ This is the most tolerable — ^in fact, the only tolerable 
point of view — in which slavery can be made to present 
itself ; and it has been, by steadily fixing their eyes on a 
few cases of this sort, and as steadily closing them to all its 
intrinsic horrors and enormities, that some bold sophists 
have mustered courage to make the eulogium of slavery. 

Yet this best condition of a slave, — that I mean of a 
household servant, — ^is often, almost too miserable for en- 
durance. If there are kind masters and good natured 
mistresses, it happens too frequently, that the master is a 
capricious tyrant, and the mistress a fretful scold. The 
poor servant is exposed, every hour of his life, to a course 
of harsh rebukes, and peevish chidings, which are ^ always 
threatening to end in the torture of the lash, and which to a 
person of any spirit or sensibility, are more annoying than 
even the lash itself. And all this is without hope or chance 
of remedy. The master and the mistress indulge their bad 
humor without restraint. No fear of ^warning’ puts any 
curb upon them. The slave is theirs ; and they can treat 


112 


MEMOIRS OF 


him as they please. He cannot help himself ; and there is 
no one to help him. 

Mr Carleton, wiiile he entertained most of the notions of 
his brother planters, differed from the greater part of them 
in one striking particular. He was a zealous presbyterian, 
and very warm and earnest, in the cause of religion. Had 
any one told him,’ that to hold men in slavery was a high- 
handed offence against religion and morality, what would 
have been his answer? Would his heart have responded 
to the truth of a sentiment so congenial to every more 
generous emotion and better feeling ? I am much afraid it 
would not. I fear he would have answered much like 
those of his brother slave-holders, who made no pretensions 
whatever to peculiar piety. With a secret consciousness of 
his criminality, but with a fixed determination never to ad- 
mit it, he would have worked himself into a violent passion ; 
talked of the ^sacred rights of property,’ — more sacred in a 
slave-holder’s estimation than either liberty or justice ; and 
declaimed against impertinent interference in the affairs of 
other people, — a topic, by the way, which is very seldom 
much insisted upon, except by those whose affairs will 
hardly bear examination. 

]Mr Carleton, though a zealous presbyterian, had, as I 
have said, most of the feelings and notions of his brother 
planters. It thus happened, that his character, his conver- 
sation and his conduct were full of strange contrasts, and 
were forever presenting an odd, incongruous mixture of the 
bully and the puritan. I use the word bully for want of 
a better, not exactly in its most vulgar sense, but intending 
to signify by it, a certain spirit of bravado and violence, 
a disposition to settle every disputed point by the pistol, so 
common, I might almost say universal, in the southern States 
of America. ^Ir Carleton with all his piety, talked as fa- 
miliarly of shooting people, as if he had been a professed 
assassin. 

As I had the honor of waiting upon Mr Carleton’s table, 
and the pleasure and advantage of listening every day to 
his conversation, I soon came to understand his character 
perfectly, — as perfectly at least as it was possible for any- 
body to understand so very inconsistent a character. He had 


A FUGITIVE. 


113 


family prayers, night and morning, with the most punctilious 
regularity. He prayed long and fervently, and on his 
bended knees. He was particularly earnest in his petitions 
for the universal spread of the gospel ; he asked most 
devoutly, that as all men were creatures of the same God, 
they might speedily become children of the same faith. 
Yet not only the plantation slaves were never invited to 
join in this family worship, but even the house-servants were 
excluded. The door was shut ; — and at the veiy moment 
when the devout !Mr Carleton professed to prostrate himself 
in the dust before his Creator, he felt too strongly the sense 
of his own superiority, to permit even his household servants 
to participate in his devotions ! 

But for all this, Mr Carleton evidently had the cause of 
religion very much at heart, and seemed ready to spend 
and be spent in the service. There were very few clergy- 
men in the part of the country in which he resided, and his 
zeal frequently led him to supply the gap, by acting as an 
exhorter. Indeed there was scarcely a Sunday that he did 
not hold forth somewhere in the neighborhood. Within ten 
miles of Carleton-Hall, in different directions, there were as 
many as three churches, wretched, ruinous, little buildings, 
that looked more like deserted barns than places of public 
worship. All of these Mr Carleton had caused to be re- 
paired, principally at his own expense, and in each of them 
he preached occasionally. But he did not consider a 
church as indispensable to an exhortation. During the 
summer, he frequently held meetings in some shady grove, 
or by the side of some cool spring ; and in the winter, 
sometimes in his own house, and sometimes in the houses 
of his neighbors. He was generally pretty sure of a con- 
siderable audience. That part of the country was thinly 
inhabited, and the people had but few amusements. They 
were glad of any occasion of assembling together, and 
seemed to care very little whether it were a preaching or 
a frolic. Besides, Mr Carleton was really an agreeable 
speaker ; and the earnestness and vehemence of his man- 
ner, were well calculated to attract an audience. 

A very considerable proportion of his hearers were slaves ; 
for ihouffh he did not judge it expedient to allow them tc 
10 * 


114 


MEMOIRS OF 


become partakers in his private devotions, he had no objec- 
tion to their swelling his audience, and giving a sort of 
eclat to his public performances. Indeed, towards the end 
of his discourses, he would often condescend to introduce a 
few sentences for their particular benefit. The change 
which took place in his manner, when he came to that part 
of his sermon, was sufficiently obvious. The phrase, ‘ dear 
brethren/ which in the earlier part of it, he was forever 
repeating, was now suddenly dropped. The preacher as- 
sumed a condescending, patronizing air, and briefly and dryly 
informed those of his hearers, ‘whom God had appointed 
to be servants,’ that their only hope of salvation was in pa- 
tience, obedience, submission, diligence and subordination. 
He warned them earnestly, against thieving and lying, their 
‘easily besetting sins;’ and enforced at some length, the 
great wickedness and folly of being discontented with their 
condition. All this was applauded by the masters as very 
orthodox doctrine, and v.ery proper to be preached to ser- 
vants. The servants themselves received it with an outward 
submission, to which their hearts gave the lie. Nor is it 
very strange, considering the doctrines which he preached 
to them, that the greater part of Mr Carleton’s converts 
among the slaves, were .hypocritical fellows, who made 
their religion a cloak for their roguery. There was in fact, 
much truth in the observation of one of Mr Carleton’s 
neighbors, that most of the slaves, in that part of the coun- 
try, had no religion at all, and that those who pretended to 
have any were worse than the others. And how could it 
be otherwise, when in the venerable name of religion, they 
had preached to them a doctrine of double-distilled tyranny, 
— a doctrine which not content with now and then a human 
victim, demanded the perpetual sacrifice of one half the 
entire community ? 

Alas Christianity ! What does it avail, — thy concern foi 
the poor, — thy tenderness for the oppressed, — thy system 
of fraternal love and affection ! The serpent knows how 
to suck poison from the harmless nature of the dove. The 
tyrants of every age and country, have succeeded in prosti- 
tuting Christianity into an instrument of their crimes, a terroi 
to their victims, and an apology for their oppressions I Nor 


A FUGITIVE. 


115 


have they ever wanted time-serving priests and lying proph- 
ets, to applaud, encourage, and sustain them ! 

However little the slaves might relish Mr Carleton’s 
doctrines, — of which indeed their own hearts instinctively 
made the refutation, — they were very fond of attending 
upon his performances. It was some relief to the eternal 
monotony of their lives ; and it gave them an opportunity 
of getting together after the meeting was over, and having a 
frolic among themselves. This recreation, which it afforded 
to the servants, was in my opinion, the best effect of Mr 
Carleton’s labors ; though certain gentlemen, who dreaded 
every assembly of slaves, as a source of discontent and 
conspiracy, were very earnest in the condemnation of his 
meetings, under the hypocritical pretence of being shocked 
at the violations of the Sabbath, of which they furnished 
the occasion ! 

Mr Carleton was president of a Bible society, and was 
very anxious and earnest about the universal diffusion of 
the Bible. I soon found out however, that besides myself, 
there was not a single slave on his plantation, nor indeed in 
all the neighborhood, who knew how to read : and what 
was more, I learned that Mr Carleton was extremely un- 
willing to have any of them taught. 

There is connected with this subject, a point of view, in 
which the system of domestic slavery that prevails in Amer- 
ica, exhibits itself as out-braving all other tyrannies, and 
betraying a demoniac spirit almost too horrid to be thought 
of. Mr Carleton believed, and the immense majority of 
his fellow countrymen believe also, that the Bible contains 
a revelation from God, of things essential to man’s eternal 
welfare. In this belief, and animated by a lofty spirit of 
philanthropy, they have formed societies — and of one of 
these Mr Carleton was president; — and contribute theif 
money — as Mr Carleton did very liberally — to disseminate 
the Bible through the world, and to put this divine and 
unerring guide into the possession of every family. But 
while tliey are so zealous to confer this inestimable treasure 
upon all the world beside, they sternly withhold it from those, 
o*' whom the law has made them the sole guardians. They 
withhold it from their slaves, of whom, to use their own 


116 


MEMOIRS OF 


favorite phrase, God has appointed them the natural pro- 
tectors ; and in so doing, by their own confession, they 
voluntarily and knowingly expose those slaves, to the dan- 
ger of eternal punishment ! To this awful danger, they 
voluntarily and knowingly expose them, lest, should they 
leani to read, they might leam at the same time, their own 
rights, and the means of enforcing them. 

What outrage upon humanity was ever equal to this ? 
Other tyrannies have proceeded all lengths against man’s 
temporal happiness ; and in support of their evil dominion, 
have hazarded every extreme of temporary cruelty ; but 
what other tyrants are recorded in all the world’s history, 
who have openly and publicly confessed, that they prefer 
to expose their victims to the imminent danger of eternal 
misery, rather than impart a degree of instruction, which 
might, by possibility, endanger their own unjust and usurped 
authority ? Can any one calmly consider the cool diabolism 
of this avowal, and believe it is men who make it ? Men 
too, who seem in other matters, not destitute of the common 
feelings of good will ; men who talk about liberty, virtue, 
and religion, and who speak even of justice and humanity ! 

Were I inclined to superstition, I should believe they 
were not men, but rather demons incarnate evil spirits 
who had assumed the human shape, and who falsely put 
on a semblance of human feelings, in order the more secretly 
and securely to prosecute their grand conspiracy against 
mankind. I should believe so, did I not know that the 
love of social superiority, that very impulse of the human 
heart, which is the main-spring of civilization and the chief 
source of all human improvement, is able, when suffered to 
work on, uncontrolled by other more generous emotions, to 
corrupt man’s whole nature, and to drive him to acts the 
most horrid and detestable. When to the corruptest form 
of this fierce passion, is joined a base fear, at once cowardly 
and cruel, what wonder that man becomes a creature to be 
scorned and hated ? — To be pitied rather ; the maniac can 
hardly be held accountable for the enormities to which his 
madness prompts him, even though that madness be self- 
created. 

Flowever diabolical the tyranny may be esteemed, wliich 


A FUGITIVE. 


117 


to secure its usurped authority, is ready to sacrifice both the 
temporal and eternal happiness of its victims, it is no doubt 
well adapted to accomplish the end at which it aims ; 
namely, its own perpetration. But it is necessary to go 
one step further. The slave-holders ought to recollect, 
that all knowledge is dangerous ; and that it is impossible 
to give the slaves any instruction in Christianity, without 
imparting to them some dangerous ideas. Jt matters not 
that the law prohibits the teaching them to read. Oral 
instruction is as dangerous as written ; and the catechism is 
nothing but a Bible in disguise. Let them go on then, 
and bring their work to a glorious completion. Let them 
prohibit at once, all religious instruction. They must come 
to this at last. Let me tell them, that the time is past, in 
which Mr Carleton’s doctrine of passive obedience is all 
that a religious teacher has to utter. There is another 
spirit abroad ; and that spirit will penetrate, wherever reli- 
gious instruction opens the way for it. Now-a-day it is 
impossible to hail the slave as a Christian brother, without 
first acknowledging his rights as a fellow man. 


CHAPTER XX. 

I I HAD not been long in Mr Carleton’s service, before I 
discovered, that a pretty sure way of getting into his good 
graces, was to be a great admirer of his religious perform- 
ance?, and a devout attendant upon such of them as his 
servants might attend. There never was a person less 
’ inclined by nature to hypocrisy than myself. But craft 
! and cunning are the sole resource of a slave ; and I had 

! long ago learned to practise a thousand arts, which, at the 

same time that I despised them, I often found extremely 
useful. ^ • 

For these arts, I now had occasion ; and I plied my 
flattery to such purpose, that I soon gained the good will 
of my master, and before long, was duly established in' the 
situation of confidential servant. This was a station of very 


118 


MEMOIRS OF 


considerable respectability ; and next to the overseer, I was 
decidedly the most consequential person on the place. It 
was my duty to attend specially upon my master, to ride 
about with him to meetings, cany, his cloak and Bible, and 
take care of his horse ; for among other matters Mr Carle- 
ton was a connoisseur in horses, and he did not like to tnist 
his, to the usual blundering negligence of his neighbors’ 
grooms. 

Pretty soon, my master found out my accomplishments 
of reading and writing, — for 1 inadvertently betrayed a secret, 
which I had determined to keep to myself. At first he did 
not seem to like it ; but as he could not unlearn me, he 
soon determined to turn these acquirements of mine to some 
account. He had a good deal of writing, of one sort and 
another ; and he set me to work as copier. In my charac- 
ter of secretary, I was often called upon, when my master 
was busy, to write passes for the people. This raised 
my consequence extremely ; and my fellow servants soon 
began to look upon me, as second only to ‘master’ 
himself. 

Mr Carleton was naturally humane and kind-hearted; 
and though his sudden out-breaks of impatience and fret- 
fulness were often vexatious enough, still if one humored 
him, they were generally soon over; and as if he reproached 
himself for not keeping a better guard upon his temper, 
they were often followed by an affability and indulgence 
greater than usual. I soon learned the art of managing 
him to the best advantage, and every day I rose in his 
favor. 

I had a good deal of leisure ; and I found means tg em- 
ploy it both innocently and agreeably. Mr Carleton had a 
collection of books very unusual for a North Carolina 
planter. This library must have contained between two 
and three hundred volumes. It was the admiration of all 
the country round ; and contributed not a little, to give its 
owner the character of a great scholar, and a very learned 
man. My situation of confidential servant, gave mei free 
access to it. The greater part of the volumes treated of 
divinity, but there were some of a more attractive descrip- 
tion ; and I was able to gratify occasionally and by stealth 


A FUGITIVE. 


119 


— for I did not lilce to be seen reading any thing but the 
Bible — that taste for knowledge which I had imbibed 
when a child, and which all the degradations of servitude, 
had not utterly extinguished. All things considered, I found 
myself much more agreeably situated, than I had been at 
any time since the death of my first master. 

I wish, both for their sakes and his own, that all the rest 
of Mr Carleton’s slaves had been as well off and as kindly 
treated as myself. The house servants, it is true, had noth- 
ing to complain of; except indeed, those grievous evils, 
which are inseparable from a state of servitude, and which 
no tenderness or indulgence on the part of the master, can 
ever do away. But the plantation hands — some fifty in 
number — were very differently situated. Mr Carleton, like 
a large proportion of American planters, had no knowledge 
of agriculture, and not the slightest taste for it. He had 
never given any attention to the business of his plantation ; 
his youth had been spent' in a course of boisterous dissipa- 
tion ; and since his conversion, he had been entirely devoted 
to the cause of religion. Of course his planting affairs and 
all that related to them, were wholly in the hands of his 
overseer, who was shrewd, plausible, intelligent and well 
acquainted with his business ; but a severe task-master, bad 
tempered, and if all reports were true, not very much over- 
burdened with honesty. Mr Warner, for this was the 
overseer’s name, was engaged on terms which however 
ruinous to the planter and his plantation, were very common 
in Virginia and the Carolinas. Instead of receiving a reg- 
ular salary in money, he took a certain proportion of the 
crop. . Of course, it was his interest to make the largest 
crop possible, without any regard whatever to the means 
used to make it. What was it to him though the lands 
were exhausted, and the slaves worn out with heavy tasks 
and unreasonable labors ? He owned neither the lands nor 
the slaves, and if in ten or twelve years, — and for some- 
thing like that time he had been established at Carleton- 
Hall, — he could scourge all their value out of them, the 
gain was his, and the loss would be his employer’s. This 
desirable consummation, he seemed pretty nearly arrived 
at. The lands at Carleton-Hall, were never cultivated, it 


120 


MEMOIRS OF 

• ' 


is likely, with any tolerable skill ; hut Mr Warner had car- 
ried the process of exhaustion to its last extremity. Field 
after held had been ‘ turned out ’ as they call it — that is, left 
uncultivated and unfenced, to grow up with broom-sedge 
and persimmon bushes, and be grazed by all the cattle of 
the neighborhood. Year after year, new land had been 
opened, and exposed to the same exhausting process, which 
had worn out the fields that had been already abandoned ; — 
till at last, there was no new land left upon the plantation. 

Mr Warner now began to talk about throwing up his em- 
ployment ; and it was only by urgent solicitations, and a 
greater proportion of the diminished produce, that Mr Carle- 
ton had prevailed upon him to remain another year. 

But it was not the land only, that suffered. The slaves 
were subjected to a like process of exhaustion ; and what 
with hard work, insufficient food, and an irregular and ca- 
pricious severity, they had become discontented, sickly and 
inefficient. There never was a time that two or three of 
them, and sometimes many more, were not runaways, wan- 
dering in the woods ; and hence originated further troubles, 
and fresh severity. 

Mr Carleton had expressly directed, that his servants 
should receive an allowance of com, and especially of meat, 
which in that part of the world was thought extremely 
liberal ; and I believe, if the allowance had been faithfully 
distributed, the heartiest man upon the place would have 
received about half as much meat as was consumed by Mr 
Carleton’s youngest daughter, a little girl some ten or twelve 
years old. But if the slaves were worthy of belief, neither 
Mr Warner’s scales nor his measure were very authentic ; 
and according to their story, so much as he could plunder 
out of their weekly allowance, went to increase his share in 
the yearly produce of the plantation. 

Once or twice, complaints of this sort had been carried 
to Mr Carleton ; but without deigning to examine into 
them, he had dismissed them as unworthy of notice. Mr 
Warner, he said, was an honest man and a Christian, — in- 
deed it was his Christian character that had first recom- 
mended him to his employer ; — and these scandalous stories 
were only invented out of that spite which slaves always 


A FUGITIVE. 


121 


feel against an overseer, who compels them to do their duty. 
It might he so ; I cannot undertake positively to contradict 
it. Yet I know that these imputations upon Mr Warner’s 
honesty were not confined to the plantation, but circulated 
pretty freely through the neighborhood ; and if he was not 
a rogue, Mr Carleton, by an unlimited, unsuspicious and 
unwise confidence, did his best to make him so. 

Whether the slaves were cheated or not, of their allow- 
ance, there -is no dispute that they were worked hard, and 
harshly treated. Mr Carleton always took sides with his 
overseer, and was in the habit of maintaining that it was 
impossible to get along on a plantation without frequent 
whipping and a good deal of severity ; and yet, as he was 
naturally good natured, it gave him pain to hear of any 
very flagrant instance of it. But he was much from home ; 
and tliat kept him ignorant, to a great degree, of what was 
going on there ; and for the rest, the overseer was anxious 
to save his feelings, and had issued very strict orders, which 
he enforced with merciless severity, that nobody should run 
to the House with tales of what was done upon the planta- 
tion. By this ingenious device, though a very common 
one, Mr Warner had every thing in his own way. In fact, 
Mr Carleton had as little control over his plantation as over 
any other in the county ; and he knew just as little 
about it. 

When my master was a young man, he had betted at 
horse-races^ and gambling-tables, and spent money very 
freely in a thousand foolish ways. Since he had grown 
religious he had dropped these expenses, but he had fallen 
into others. It was no small sum that he spent every 
year, upon Bibles, church repairs, and other pious objects. 
For several years his income had been diminishing ; but 
without any corresponding diminution of his expenses. As 
a natural consequence, he had become deeply involved in 
debt. His overseer had grown rich, while he had been 
growing poor. His lands and slaves were mortgaged, and 
he began to be plagued by the sheriff’s officer. But these 
perplexities did not cause him to forego his spiritual la- 
bors, which he prosecuted, if possible, more diligently 
than before. 


11 


122 


MEMOIRS OF 


I had now been living with him some six or seven 
months, and was completely established in his favor, when 
one Sunday morning, we set off together for a place about 
eight miles distant, where he had not preached before, since 
I had been in his service. The place appointed for the 
meeting, was in the open air. It was a pretty place though, 
and well adapted to the purpose, being a gentle swell of 
ground over which were thinly scattered a number of 
ancient, and wide-spreading oaks. Their outstretched limbs 
formed a thick shade, under which there were neither weeds 
nor undergrowth, but something more like a grassy lawn, 
than is often to be seen in that country. Near the top of 
the swell, somebody had fixed up some rude benches ; and 
partly supported against one of the largest trees, was a 
misshapen little platform, with a chair or two upon it, 
which seemed intended for the pulpit. 

Quite a troop of horses, and as many as ten or twelve 
carriages, were collected at the foot of the swell ; and the 
benches were already occupied by a considerable number 
of peopld. The white hearers however, were far outnum- 
bered by the slaves, who were scattered about in groups, 
most of them in their Sunday dresses, and many of them 
very decent looking people. A few however, were miser- 
ably ragged and dirty ; and there was quite a number of 
half-grown children from the adjoining plantations, with- 
out a rag to hide their nakedness. 

My master seemed well pleased with thq prospect of so 
large an audience. He dismounted at the foot of the hill, 
if a rise so gentle deserved the name, and delivered his 
horse into my charge. I sought out a convenient place 
in which to tie the horses ; and as I knew the services 
Would not begin immediately, I sauntered about, looking at 
the equipages and the company. While I was occupied in 
this way, a smart carriage drove up. It stopped. A ser- 
vant jumped from behind, opened the door and let down 
the steps. An elderly lady, and another about eighteen or 
twenty, occupied the back seat. On the front seat, was a 
woman whom I took to be their maid, though I could not 
see her distinctly. Something called off my attention and 
I turned another wav. When I looked again, the two 


A FUGITIVE. 


123 


ladies were walking up the hill and the maid was on 
the ground, with her back towards me, taking some- 
thing from the carriage.- A moment after, she turned 
round, and I knew her. It was Gassy, — it was my 
wife. 

I sprang forward and caught her in my arms. She 
recognized me at the same moment ; and uttering a 
cry of surprise and pleasure, she would have fallen 
had I not supported her. She recovered herself di- 
rectly, and bade me let her go, for she had been sent 
back for her mistress’s fan, and she must make haste 
and carry it to her. She told me to wait though, for 
if she could get leave, she would come back again 
immediately. She tripped up the hill, and overtook 
her mistress. I could see, by her gestures, the eager- 
ness with which she urged her request; It was 
granted, and in a moment she was again at my 
side. Again I pressed her to my bosom, and again 
she returned my embrace. Once more I felt what it 
was to be happy. I took her by the hand, and led 
her to a little wood, on the opposite side of the road. 
Here was a thick young growth, where we could sit, 
screened from observation. We sat down upon a 
fallen tree ; and while I held her hands fast locked in 
mine, we asked and answered a thousand questions. 

The first emotions and agitation of our meeting 
over. Gassy required of me a detailed narrative of 
my adventures since our separation. With what a 
kindling eye and heaving bosom did she listen to my 
story ; at every painful incident of it, the fast flowing 
tears chasing each other down her cheeks, now pale, 
now flushed ; at every gleam of ease or comfort, a 
tender, joyous, sympathizing smile beaming upon 
me, breathing new life into my soul! You who 
have loved as we loved, — you who have parted as 
we parted, with no hope ever to meet again, — you 
who have met as we met, brought together by ac- 
cident or by Providence, — you, and only you, may 
imagine the emotions that swelled my heart as I 
pressed the hand, and felt the presence, and basked 


124 


MEMOIRS OF 


in the sympathy of a woman, and a wife, as dear to 
me, slave though I was, slave though she was — as 
dear to me as the wife of his bosom is to the proud- 
est freeman of you all. 

My story finished, again Gassy clasped me in her 
arms, and claimed me as her husband; tears, but 
tears of joy, again fast flowing down her cheeks. 
There for a while she sat, silent, seeming as if lost 
in a sort of reverie, or, indeed, almost as if doubting 
whether all that she had just heard, — whether the 
very husband whom she saw before her, — whether 
our whole unexpected meeting was any thing more 
than a treacherous dream. But with a kiss or two I 
recalled her attention, and made her understand that 
I was no less anxious to hear her story than she had 
been to hear mine. 


A FUGITIVE. 


125 


CHAPTER XXL 

It seemed to be with the greatest reluctance, that the 
poor girl carried back her recollection to that terrible day 
which had separated us, as we then thought, forever. She 
hesitated, — and seemed half ashamed, and almost unwilling 
to speak of what had followed after that separation. I 
pitied her ; and great as was my curiosity — if my feelings 
on that occasion deserve so trifling a name — I could almost 
have wished her to pass over the interval in silence. Dis- 
tressing doubts and dreadful apprehensions crowded upon 
me, and I almost dreaded to hear her speak. But she hid 
her face in my bosom, and murmuring in a voice half 
choked with sobs, ‘^My husband must know it,” — she 
began her story. 

She was already, she told me, more than half dead with 
fright and horror, and the first blow that colonel Moore 
struck, beat her senseless to the ground. When she came 
to her senses, she found herself lying on a bed, in a room 
which she did not recollect ever to have seen before. She 
rose from the bed as well as her bruises would allow her ; 
for she did not move without difficulty. The room was 
prettily furnished ; the bed was hung with curtains, neat 
and comfortable ; a dressing table stood in one corner ; and 
there was all the usual furniture of a lady’s bed-chamber, 
— ^but it was not like any room in the house at Spring- 
Meadow. 


126 


MEMOIRS OF 


She tried to open the doors, of which there were two, but 
both were fastened. She endeavored to get a peep from 
the windows, in the hope that she might know some part 
of the prospect. But she could only discover that the 
house seemed to be surrounded by trees ; for the windows 
were guarded on the outside by close blinds, which were 
fastened in some way she did not understand, so that she 
could not open them. This fastening of the doors and 
windows, satisfied her that she was held a prisoner, and 
confirmed all her worst suspicions. 

As she passed by the dressing table, she caught a look 
at the glass. Her face was deadly pale ; her hair fell in 
loose disorder over her shoulders, and looking down, she 
saw stains of blood upon her dress, — but whether her own 
or her husband’s she could not tell. She sat down on the 
bedside ; her head was dizzy and confused, and she scarce- 
ly knew whether she were awake or dreaming. 

Presently one of the doors opened, and a woman entered. 
It was Miss Bitty,* as she was called among the servants 
at Spring-Meadow, a pretty, dark-complexioned damsel, 
who enjoyed at that time, the station and dignity of colonel 
Moore’s favorite. Cassy’s heart beat hard, while she heard 
some one fumbling at the lock. When the door opened 
she was glad to see that it was only a woman, and one 
whom she knew. She ran towards her, caught her by the 
hand, and begged her protection. The girl laughed, and 
asked what she was afraid of. Gassy hardly knew what 
answer to make. After hesitating a moment, she begged 
Miss Bitty to tell her where she was, and what they intend 
ed to do with her. 

“It is a fine place you’re in,” was the answer, “and 
when master comes, you can ask him what is to be done 
with you.” This was said with, a significant titter, which 
Gassy knew too well how to interpret. 

Though Miss Bitty had evaded a direct answer to her 
inquiry, it now occurred to her where she must be. This 
woman, she recollected, occupied a small house — ^the 
same that once had been inhabited by Gassy’s mother and 
by mine, — at a considerable distance from any other on 


^ Henrietta. 


A FUGITIVE. 


127 


the plantation. It was surrounded by a little grove which 
almost hid it from view, and was very seldom visited by 
any of tlie servants. Miss Ritty looked upon herself, and 
was in fact regarded by the rest of us, as a perspn of no 
little consequence ; and though she sometimes condescend- 
ed to make visits, she was not often anxious to have them 
returned. Gassy, hpwever, had been once or twice at her 
house. There were two little rooms in front, into which she 
was freely admitted ; but the apartment behind was locked ; 
and it was whispered among the servants, that colonel Moore 
kept the key, so that even Miss Ritty herself did not enter 
it except in his company. This perhaps was mere scan- 
dal ; but Gassy recollected to have noticed that the windows 
of this room were protected against impertinent curiosity, 
by close blinds- on the outside ; and she no longer doubted 
where she was. 

She told Miss Ritty as much, and inquired, if her mis- 
tress knew of her return. 

Miss Ritty could not tell. 

She asked if her mistress had got another maid in her 
place. 

Miss Ritty did not know. 

She begged for permission to go and see her mistress ; 
but that. Miss Ritty said, was impossible. 

She requested that her mistress might be told where she 
was ; and that she wished very much to see her. 

iVIiss Ritty said that she would be glad to oblige her, but 
she was not much in the habit of going to the House, and 
the last time she was there, Mrs Moore had spoken to her 
so spitefully, that she was determined never to go again, 
unless she were absolutely obliged to. 

Having thus exhausted every resource, poor Gassy threw 
herself upon the bed, hid her face in the bedclothes, and 
sought relief in tears. 

It was now Miss Ritty ’s turn. She patted the poor girl 
on the shoulder, bade her not be down-hearted, and un- 
locking a bureau which stood in the room, she took out a 
dress which she pronounced to be “mighty handsome.” 
She bade Gassy get up and put it on, for her master would 
be cormng presently. This was what Gassy feared ; but 


128 


MEMOIRS OF 


she hoped, if she could not escape the visit, at least to defer 
it. So she told Miss Ritty that she was too sick to see any 
body ; she absolutely refused to look at her dresses, and 
begged to be allowed to die in peace. Miss Ritty laughed 
when she spoke of dying ; yet she seemed a little alarmed 
at the idea of it, and inquired what was the matter. 

Gassy told her that she had seen and suffered enough 
that day, to kill any body ; that her head was sick and her 
heart was broken, and the sooner death came to her relief 
the better. She then mustered courage to mention my 
name, and endeavored to discover what had become of me. 
Miss Ritty again shook her head and declared that she 
could give no information. 

At that moment the door opened, and colonel Moore 
came in. He had a haggard and guilty look. The flush 
which overspread his face, when she had last seen him, 
was wholly gone ; his countenance was pale and ghastly. 
She had never seen him look so before, and she trembled at 
the sight of him. He bade Ritty begone ; but told her to 
wait in the front room as perhaps he might need her assist- 
ance. He bolted the door, and sat down on the bed by 
Gassy’s side. She started up in terror, and retired to the 
farthest corner of the room. He smiled scornfully, and 
bade her come back, and sit down beside -him. She obey- 
ed ; — for however reluctant, she could do no better. He 
took her hand, and threw one arm about her waist. Again 
she shrank from him, and would have fled ; but he stamped 
his foot impatiently, and in a harsh tone, bade her be quiet. 

For a moment he was silent; — then changing his manner, 
he summoned up his habitual smile, and began in that mild, 
gentle, insinuating tone, in which he was quite unsurpassed. 
He plied her with flattery, soft words and generous prom- 
ises. He reproached her, but without any harehness, for 
her attempts to evade the kindness he intended her. 
He then spoke of me ; but no sooner had he entered on 
that subject, than his voice rose, his face became flushed 
again, and he seemed in manifest danger of losing his 
temper. 

She interrupted him, and besought him to tell her how I 
did and what had become of me. He answered that I was 


A FUGITIVE. 


129 


well enough ; much better than I deserved to be ; but she 
need give herself no further thought or trouble on that score, 
for he intended to send me out of the country as soon as I 
was able to travel ; and she need not hope nor expect ever 
to see me again. 

She most earnestly besought and begged that she might 
be sent off and sold with me. He affected to be greatly 
surprised at this . request, and inquired why she made it. 
She told him, that after all that had happened, it were 
better that she should not live any longer in his family ; 
beside, if she were sold at the same time, the same person 
might buy her that bought her husband. That word, hus- 
band, put him into a violent passion. He told her that she 
had ho husband, and wanted none ; for he would be better 
than a husband to her. He said that he was tired of her 
folly, and with a significant look, he bade her not be % 
fool, but to leave off whining and ciying, be a good girl, 
and do as her master desired ; was it not a servant’s duty 
to obey her master ? 

She told him that she was sick and wretched, and begged 
him to leave her. Instead of doing so, he threw his arms 
about her neck, and declared that her being sick was all 
imagination, for he had never seen her look half so hand- 
some. 

She started up ; — ^but he caught her in his arms, and 
dragged her towards the bed. Even at that terrible mo- 
ment, her presence of mind did not forsake her. She ex- 
erted her strength, and succeeded in breaking away from 
his hateful embraces. Then summoning up all her ener- 
gies, she looked him in the face, as well as her tears would 
allow her, and striving to command her voice, Master, — 
Father ! ” she cried, “ what is it you would have of your 
own daughter ? ” 

Colonel Moore staggered as if a bullet had struck him. 
A burning blush overspread his face ; he would have spoken, 
but the words seemed to stick in his throat. This confu- 
sion was only for a moment. In an instant, he recovered 
his self-possession, and without taking any notice of her last 
appeal, he merely said, that if she were really sick, he did 
not wish to trouble her. With these words he unbolted the 
door, and walked out of the room. 


130 


MEMOIRS OF 


She heard him talking with Miss Ritty ; and he had 
been gone but a few moments, before she entered. She 
began with a long string of questions about what colonel 
Moore had said and done ; but when Gassy did not seem 
inclined to give her any answer, she laughed, and thanked 
her, and told her she need not trouble herself, for she had 
been peeping and listening at the key-hole, the whole time. 
She said, she could not imagine, why Gassy made such a 
fuss. In a very young girl it might be excusable ; but in 
one as old as she was, and a mamed woman too, she could 
not understand it. Such is the morality, and such the 
modesty to be expected in a slave ! 

The poor girl was in no humor for controversy ; so she 
listened to this ribaldry without making any answer So it. 
Yet even at that moment, a faint ray of hope began to dis- 
4js>]ay itself. It occurred to her, that if Miss Ritty could be 
made sensible of the risk she ran in aiding to create herself 
a rival, she would not be pleased at the prospect of being 
perhaps supplanted in a situation, which she seemed to find 
so very agreeable. This idea appeared to offer some chance 
of gaining over Miss Ritty to aid her in escaping from 
Spring-Meadow ; and at once, she resolved to act upon it. 
It was necessary to be cautious and to feel her way, lest by 
piquing the girl’s pride, she might deprive herself of all the 
advantage to be gained from working upon her fears. 

She approached the subject gradually, and soon placed 
it in a light, in which, it was plain, her companion had 
never viewed it. When it was fii’st suggested to her, she 
expressed a deal of confidence in her own beauty, and af- 
fected to have no fears yet it soon became obvious, that 
notwithstanding all her boasting, she was a good deal 
alarmed. Indeed it was quite impossible for her, to look 
her anticipated rival in the face, and not to perceive the 
danger. Gassy was well pleased to see the effect of her 
suggestions ; and began to entertain some serious hopes of 
once more making her escape. 

It was, to be sure, a miserable, and most probably an 
ineffectual resource, this running away. But what else 
could she do ? What other hope was there of escaping a 
fate which all her womanly and all her religious feelings 


A FUGITIVE. 


131 


taught her to regard with the utmost horror and detestation ? 
This was her only chance ; she would try it, and trust in 
God’s aid to give her endeavors a happy issue. 

She now told Miss Ritty distinctly, how she felt, what 
she intended, and what assistance she wanted. Her new 
confederate applauded her resolution. Certainly, if colonel 
Moore was really her father, that did make a difference ; 
and her being a Methodist might help to account for her 
feelings, for she knew that sort of folks were mighty strict 
in all their notions.” 

But though Miss Ritty was ready enough to encourage 
and applaud, she seemed very reluctant to take any active 
part in aiding and abetting an escape, which though ap- 
parently it tended to piomote her interests, might end, if 
her agency in it were discov^ed, in bringing her into danger 
and disgrace. 

Several plans were talked over, but Miss Ritty had some 
objection to all of them. She preferred any thing to the risk 
of being suspected by her master, of plotting to defeat his 
wishes. As they found great difficulty in fixing upon any 
feasible plan, it was agreed at last, in order to gain time, to 
give out that Gassy was extremely sick. This indeed was 
hardly a fiction ; — for nothing but the very critical nature 
of her situation had enabled the poor girl to sustain herself 
against the shocks and miseries of the last four and twenty 
hours. Ritty undertook to persuade her master, that the 
best thing he could do, was to let her alone till she got 
better. She would promise to take her into training in the 
mean time, and was to assure colonel Moore, that she did 
not doubt of being soon able to convince her, that it was 
both her interest and her duty, to comply with her master’s 
wishes. 

So far things went extremely well. They had hardly 
arranged their- plan, before they heard colonel Moore’s step 
in the outer room. Ritty ran to him, and succeeded in 
persuading him to go away without any attempt to see 
Gassy. He commended her zeal, and promised to be 
governed by her advice. The next day a circumstance 
happened which neither Gassy nor Ritty had anticipated, 
but which proved very favorable to their design. Golone! 


132 


MEMOIRS OF 


Moore was obliged to set off for Baltimore, without delay 
Some pressing call of business, made his immediate depart- 
ure indispensable. Before setting out, however,, he found 
time to visit Ritty, and to enjoin upon her to keep a watch- 
ful eye upon Gassy, and to take care and bring her to her 
senses, before his return. 

If Gassy was to escape at all, now was the time. She 
soon hit upon a scheme. Her object was, to screen Ritty 
from suspicion as much as to favor her own flight. Luckily 
the same arrangement might be made to accomplish both 
purposes. Gassy could only escape through the door, or 
out of the windows. Escaping through the door was out 
of the question, because Ritty had the key of it, and was 
supposed to be sleeping, or watching, ‘or both together, in 
the front room. The escape then must be by the windows. 
These did not lift up as is commonly the case, but opened 
upon hinges on the inside. The blinds by which they 
were guarded on the outside were slats nailed across the 
window-frames and not intended to be opened. These 
must be cut or broken ; and as they were of pine, this was 
a task of no great difficulty. Ritty brought a couple of 
table knives, and assisted in cutting them away, — though 
according to the stor}'' she was to tell her master, she was 
sleeping all the time, most soundly and unsuspiciously, and 
Gassy must have secretly cut away the slats with a pocket- 
knife. 

Early in the evening of colonel Moore’s departure, every 
thing was ready, and Gassy was to sally forth as soon as 
she dared to venture. Ritty agreed not to give any notice 
of her escape till'late the next day. This delay she could 
account for by the plea of not being able to find the over- 
seer, and by a pretended uncertainty as to whether it would 
be colonel Moore’s wish, that the overseer should be in- 
formed at all about the matter. At all events, they hoped 
that no very vigorous pursuit would be made until colonel 
Moore’s return. 

Gassy now made ready for her departure. She felt a 
pang at the idea of leaving me ; — but as Ritty could not or 
would not tell her what had become of me, and as she 
knew, that separated and helpless as we were, it was im- 


A FUGITIVE. 


133 


possible for us to render each other any assistance, she rightly 
judged, that she would best serve me, and best comply with 
my wishes, by adopting the only plan, that seemed to car^y 
with it any likelihood of preserving herself from the violence 
she dreaded. 

Gassy had supplied herself from Kitty’s allowance, with 
food enough to last for several days. It was now quite 
dark, and time for her to go. She kissed her hostess and 
confederate, who seemed much affected at dismissing her 
on so lonely and hopeless an adventure, and who freely 
gave her what little money she had. Gassy was a good 
deal touched at this unexpected generosity. She let her- 
self down from the window, bade Kitty farewell, and sum- 
moning up all her resolution and self-'command, she took the 
nearest way across the fields,, towards the high-road. This 
road was little travelled except by the people of Spring- 
Meadow and one or two other neighboring plantations, and 
at this hour of the evening, there was little danger of meet- 
ing any body, except perhaps a night-walking slave, who 
would be as anxious as herself to avoid being seen. There 
was no moon, — but the glimmer of the star-light served to 
guide her steps. She felt no apprehension of losing her 
way, for she had frequently been in the carriage with her 
mistress, as far as the little village at the court-house of the 
county ; and it was hither, that in the first instance, she de- 
termined to go; 

She arrived there, without having met a single soul. As 
fet there were no signs of morning. All was still, save the 
monotonous chirpings of the summer insects, interrupted 
now and then by the crowing of a cock, or the barking of a 
watch dog. The village consisted of a dilapidated court- 
house, a black-smith’s shop, a tavern, two or three stores, 
jtnd half a dozen scattered houses. It was situated at the 
meeting of two roads. One of these she knew, led into the 
road that ran towards Baltimore. She had flattered herself 
with the idea of reaching that city, where she had many 
acquaintances, and where she hoped she might find protec- 
tion and employment. Her chance of ever getting there 
was very small. Baltimore was some two or three hundred 
miles distant; and she did not even know which of the 
12 


134 


MEMOIRS OF 


roads that met at the court-house she ought to take. She 
could not inquire the way, beg a cup of cold water, or even 
be seen upon the road, without the risk of being taken up 
as a runaway, and carried back to the master from whom 
she was flying. 

After hesitating for some time, she took one of the roads 
that offered themselves to her choice, and walked on with 
vigor. The excitement of the last day or two seemed to 
give her an unnatural strength ; for after a walk of some 
twenty miles, she felt fresher than at first. But the light 
of the morning dawn, which began to show itself, reminded 
her that it was no longer safe to pursue her journey. Close 
by the road side was a friendly thicket, the shrubs and weeds 
all dripping with the dew. She had gone but a little way 
among them, when she found them so high and close as’ to 
furnish a sufficient hiding-place. She knelt down, and 
destitute as she was of human assistance, she besought the 
aid and guardian care of Heaven. After eating a scanty 
meal, — ^for it was necessary to husband her provisions, — she 
scraped the leaves together into a rude bed, and composed 
herself to sleep. The three preceding nights she had scarcely 
slept at all, — ^but she made it up now, for she did not wake 
till late in the afternoon. 

As soon as evening closed in, she started again, and 
walked as vigorously as before. The road forked frequently ; 
but she had no means of determining which of the various 
courses she ought to follow. She took one or the other, as 
her judgment, or rather as her fancy decided ; and she com- 
forted herself with the notion, that whether right or wrong 
in her selections, at all events, she was getting further from 
Spri ng-Meadow. 

In the course of the night she met several travellers. 
Some of them passed without seeming to notice her. She 
discovered some at a distance, and concealed herself in the 
bushes till they had gone by. But she did not always es- 
cape so easily. More than once, she was stopped and 
questioned ; but luckily she succeeded in giving satisfactory 
answers. Indeed there was nothing in her complexion, 
especially in the uncertain light of the evening, that would 
clearly indicate her to be a slave ; and in answering the 


A FUGITIVE. 


135 


questions that were put to her, she took care to say nothing 
that would betray her condition. One of the men who 
questioned her, shook his head, and did not seem satisfied; 
another, sat on his horse and watched her till she was fairly 
out of sight ; a third told her, that she was a very suspicious 
character ; — but all three suffered her to pass. She was the 
less liable to interruption, because in Virginia, the houses 
of the inhabitants are not generally situated along the public 
roads. The planters usually prefer to build at some dis- 
tance from the high way, — and the roads, passing ^long the 
highest and most barren tracts, wind their weary length 
through a desolate, and what seems almost an uninhabited 
country. When morning approached again, she concealed 
herself as before, and waited for the return of night to pur- 
sue her journey. 

She proceeded in this way for four days, or rather nights, 
at the end of which time her provisions were entirely ex- 
hausted. She had wandered she knew not whither, — and 
the hope of reaching Baltimore, which at first had lightened 
her fatigue, was now quite gone. She knew not what to 
do. To go much further without assistance was scarcely 
possible. Yet should she ask any where for food or guid- 
ance, though she stood some chance perhaps of passing for 
a free white woman, still her complexion, and the circum- 
stance of her travelling alone, might cause her to be sus- 
pected as a runaway, and very probably, she would be 
stopped, put into some jail, and detained there, till suspicion 
was changed into certainty. 

She was travelling slowly along, the fifth night, exhausted 
with hunger and fatigue, and reflecting upon her unhappy 
situation, when descending a hill, the road came suddenly 
upon the banks of a broad river. There was no bridge ; 
but a ferry boat was fastened to the shore, and close by was 
the ferry house, which seemed also to be a tavern. Here 
was a new perplexity. She could not cross the river with- 
out calling up the ferry people or waiting till they made 
their appearance, and this would be exposing hersell at once 
to that risk of detection which she had resolved to defer to 
the very last moment. Yet to turn back and seek another 
road seemed to be an expedient equally desperate. Any 


136 


MEMOIRS OF 


otlier road, which did not lead in a direction opposite to that 
which she wished to follow, would be likely to bring her 
again upon the banks of the same river ; and as she could 
not live without food, she would be soon compelled to ap- 
ply somewhere for assistance, and to face the detection she 
was so anxious to avoid. 

She sat down by the roadside, resolved to wait for the 
morning, and to take her chance. There was a field of corn 
near the house, and the stalks were covered with roasting 
ears. She had no fire, nor the means of kindling one ; but 
the sweet milky taste of the unripe kernels served to satisfy 
the cravings of hunger. 

She had chosen a place where she could observe the first 
movements about the ferry house. The morning had but 
just dawned, when she saw a man open the door and come 
out of it. He was black, and she walked boldly up to him, 
and told him that she was in great haste and wished to be 
taken across the ferry immediately. The fellow seemed 
rather surprised at seeing a woman, a traveller, alone, and 
at that hour of the morning ; — ^but after staring at her a 
minute or two, he appeared to recollect that here was an 
opportunity of turning an honest penny, and muttering 
something about the earliness of the hour, and the ferry boat 
not starting till after sunrise, he offered to take her across 
in a canoe, for half a dollar. This price she did not hesi- 
tate to pay ; and the fellow no doubt, put it into his own 
pocket, without ever recollecting to hand it over to his 
master, or to mention a word to him about this early pas- 
senger. 

They entered the boat, and he paddled her across. She 
did not dare to ask any questions, lest she should betray 
herself ; and she did her best to quiet the curiosity of the 
boatman, who however, was very civil and easily satisfied. 
Having landed on the opposite shore, she travelled on a 
mile or two further. By this time it was broad day-light, 
and she concealed herself as usual. 

At night, she set out again. But she was faint with 
hunger, her shoes were almost worn out, her feet were 
swollen and very painful, and altogether, her situation was 
any thing but comfortable. She seemed to have got ofi* the 


A FUGITIVE. 


137 


higli-way, and to be travelling some cross-road, which wound 
along through dreary and deserted fields, and appeared to 
be very little frequented. All that night, she did not meet 
a single person, or pass a single house. Painful as was the 
effort, she still struggled to drag along her weary steps ; but 
her spirits were broken, her heart was sinking, and her 
strength was almost gone. At length the morning dawned ; 
hut the wretched Gassy did not seek her customary hiding- 
place. She still kept on in hopes of reaching some house. 
She was now quite subdued; and chose to risk her liberty, 
and even to hazard being carried back to Spring-Meadow, 
and subjected to the fearful fate from which she was flying, 
rather than perish with hunger and fatigue. Sad indeed it 
is, that the noblest resolution and the loftiest stubbornness 
of soul is compelled so often to yield to the base necessities 
of animal nature, and from a paltry and irrational fear of 
death, — of which tyrants have ever known so well to take 
advantage, — to sink down from the lofty height of heroic 
virtue, to the dastard submissiveness of a craven and obedi- 
ent slave ! 

She had not gone far before she saw a low mean looking 
house by the road side. It was a small building of logs, 
blackened with age, and not a little dilapidated. Half the 
panes or more, were wanting in the two or three little win- 
dows with which it was provided, and their places were 
supplied by old hats, old coats, and pieces of plank. The 
door seemed dropping from its hinges ; and there was no 
enclosure of any kind about the house, unless that name 
might properly be given to the tall weeds with which it was 
surrounded. Altogether, it showed most manifest signs of 
thriftless and comfortless indolence. 

She knocked softly at the door ; and a female voice, but 
a rough and harsh one, bade her come in. There was no 
hall or entry ; the out-door opened directly into the only 
room; and on entering, she found it occupied by a middle 
aged woman, barefooted, and in a slovenly dress, with her 
uncombed hair hanging about a haggard and sun-burnt face. 
She was setting a rickety table, and seemed to be making 
preparations for breakfast. One side of the room was al- 
most wholly taken up by an enormous fire place. A fire 
1 ^" 


138 


MEMOIRS Oi’ 


was burning' in it, and the corn-cakes were baking in the 
ashes. In the opposite corner was a low bed, on which a 
man, the master of the family most likely, lay still a-sleep, 
undisturbed by the cries and clamors of half-a-dozen brats, 
who had been tumbling and bawling about the house, un- 
washed, uncombed, and half naked, but who were seized 
with sudden silence, and- slunk behind their mother, at the 
sight of a stronger. 

The woman pointed to a rude sort of stool or bench, 
which seemed the only piece of furniture in the nature of a 
chair, which the house contained, and asked Gassy to sit 
down. She did so ; and her hostess eyed her sharply, and 
seemed to wait with a good deal of curiosity to hear who 
she was, and what she wanted. As soon as Gassy could 
collect her thoughts, she told her hostess that she was trav- 
elling from Richmond to Baltimore to see a sick sister. 
She was poor and friendless, and was obliged to go on foot. 
She had lost her way, and had wandered about all night, 
without knowing where she was, or whither she was going. 
She was half dead, she added, with hunger and fatigue, and 
wanted food and rest, and such directions about the road, 
as might enable her to pursue her journey. At the same 
time she took out her purse, in order to show that she was 
able to pay for what she wanted. 

Her hostess, notwithstanding her rude and poverty-strick- 
en appearance, seemed touched with this pitiful story. 
She told her to put up her money ; she said she did not keep 
a tavern, and that she was able to give a poor woman a 
breakfast, without being paid for it. 

Gassy was too faint and weak to be much in a humor 
for talking ; besides, she trembled at every word, lest she 
might drop some unguarded expression that would serve to 
betray her. But now that the ice was broken, the curiosity 
of her hostess could not be kept under. She overwhelmed 
her with a torrent of questions, and every time Gassy hesi- 
tated, or gave any sign of confusion, she turned her keen 
grey eyes upon her, with a sharp and penetrating expres- 
sion that increased her disorder. •• 

Pretty soon the ash-cakes were baked, and the other 
preparations for breakfast were finished, when the woman 


A FUGITIVE. 


139 


shook her good man roughly by the shoulder, and bade him 
bestir himself. This connubial salutation roused the sleeper. 
He sat up on the bed, and stared about the room with a 
vacant gaze ; but the redness of his eyes, and the sallow 
paleness of his face, seemed to show that he had not quite 
slept off the effects of the last night’s frolic. The wife ap- 
peared to know what was wanting ; for she forthwith pro- 
duced the whiskey-jug, and poured out a large dose of the 
raw spirit. Her husband drank it off with a relish, and with 
a trembling hand, returned the broken glass to his wife, 
who filled 'it half full, and emptied it herself. Then turning 
to Gassy, and remarking, that, a body was fit for nothing 
till they had got their morning bitters,” she offered her a 
dram, and seemed not a little astonished at its being de- 
clined. 

The good man then began leisurely to. dress himself; and 
had half finished his toilet before he seemed to notice that 
there was company in the house. He now came forward, 
and bade the stranger good morning. His wife immediate- 
ly drew him aside, and they began an earnest whispering. 
Now and then they would both look Gassy in the face, and 
as she was conscious that she must be the subject of their 
conversation, she began to feel a good deal of embarrass- 
ment, which she was too little practised in deceit to be able to 
conceal. This matrimonial conference over, the good woman 
bade Gassy draw up her stool and sit down at the break- 
fast table. The breakfast consisted of hot corn-cakes and 
cold bacon, a palatable meal enough in any case, but which 
Gassy’s long starvation made her look upon as the most de- 
licious she had ever eaten. Sweet indeed, ought to be 
that mess of pottage, for which one sells the birthright of 
freedom ! 

She ate with an appetite which she could not restrain ; 
and her hostess seemed a good deal surprised and a little 
alarmed, at the rapidity with which the table was cleared. 
Breakfast being finished, the man of the house began to 
question her. He asked her about Richmond, and whether 
she knew such and such persons, who, as he said, were 
living there. Gassy had never been in Richmond, and 
knew the town only by name. Of course, her answers 


140 


MEMOIRS OF 


were very little to the purpose. She blushed and stam- 
mered and held down her head, and the man completed 
her confusion by telling her, that it was very plain she had 
not come from Richmond, as she pretended ; for he was 
well acquainted with the place, and it was clear enough, 
from her answers, that she knew nothing about it. He 
told her that it was no use to deny it ; — her face betrayed 
her ; — and he “ reckoned,” if the truth was told, she was 
no better than a runaway. At the sound of this word, the 
blood rushed into her face, and her heart sunk within her. 
It was in vain, that she denied, protested, and .entreated. 
Her terror, confusion and alarm only served to give new 
assurance to her captors, who seemed to chuckle over their 
prize, and to amuse themselves with her fright and misery, 
very much as a cat plays with the mouse it has caught. 

He told her that if she were in fact a free woman, there 
was not the slightest ground for alarm. If she had no free 
papers with her, she would only have to lie in jail till she 
could send to Richmond and get them. That was all ! 

But that was more than enough for poor Gassy. No 
proofs of freedom could she produce ; and her going to jail 
would be almost certain to end in her being restored to 
colonel Moore, and becoming the wretched victim of his rage 
and lust. That fate, must be deferred as long as possible, 
and there seemed but one way of escaping it. 

She confessed that she was a slave, and a runaway ; 
but she positively refused to tell the name of her master. 
He lived, she said, a great way off ; and she had run away 
from him not out of any spimt of discontent or disobedience, 
but because his cruelty and injustice were too great to be 
endured. There was nothing she would not choose rather 
than fall into his hands again; if they would only save 
her from that, — if they would only let her live with them, 
she would be their faithful and obedient servant as long as 
she lived. 

The man and his wife looked at each other and seemed 
pleased with the idea. They walked aside and talked it 
over. Nothing appeared to deter them from accepting her 
proposal, at once, but the fear of being detected in harbor- 
ing and detaining a runaway. Gassy did her best to quiet 


A FUGITIVE. 


141 


these apprehensions; and after a short struggle, avarice 
and the dear delight of power triumphed over their fears, 
and Gassy became the property of Mr Proctor — for so the 
man was named. His property, as he might speciously 
argue, by her own consent ; a ten times better title, than 
the vast majority of his countrymen could boast. 

To prevent suspicions among the neighbors, it was 
agreed that Gassy should pass for a free woman, whom 
Mr Proctor had hired ; and as that gentleman had been so 
fortunate as to have been initiated into the art and mystery 
of penmanship^ — an accomplishment somewhat rare among 
the ‘ poor white folks ’ of Virginia — in order that Gassy 
might be prepared to answer impertinent questions, he gave 
her free-papers, which he forged for the occasion. 

It was a great thing to have escaped returning to Spring- 
Meadow. But for all that. Gassy soon discovered, that 
her present situation would not prove very agreeable. Mr 
Proctor was the descendant and representative of what, at 
no distant period, had been a rich and very respectable 
family. The frequent division of a large estate, which no- 
body took any pains to increase, while all diminished it by 
idleness, dissipation and' bad management, had left Mr 
Proctor’s father in possession of a few slaves and a consid- 
erable tract of worn-out land. At his death, the slaves 
had been sold to pay his debts, and the land, being divided 
among his numerous children, had made Mr Proctor the 
possessor of only a few barren acres. But though left with 
this miserable pittance, he had been brought up, in the dis- 
sipated and indolent habits of a Virginian gentleman ; the 
land he owned,- which was so poor and worthless that none 
of his numerous creditors thought it worth their while to 
disturb him in the possession of it, still entitled him to the 
dignity of a freeholder and a voter ; and he felt himself as 
much above, what is esteemed in that country, the base 
and degraded condition of a laborer, as the richest aristo- 
crat in the whole state. He was as proud, as lazy, and as 
dissipated as any of the nabobs, his neighbors ; and like 
them, he devoted the principal part of his time to gam- 
bling, politics and drink. 

Luckily for Mr Proctor, his wife was a very notable 


142 


MEMOIRS OF 


woman. She boasted no patrician blood ; and when her 
husband began to talk, as he often did, about the antiquity 
and respectability of his family, she would cut him short by 
observing, that she thought herself full as good as he was, — 
but for all that, her ancestors had been ‘poor folks’ as far 
back as any body knew any thing about them. If the 
question between aristocracy and democracy were to be 
settled by the experience of the Proctors, the plebeians, 
most undoubtedly, would carry the day ; for while her hus- 
band did little or nothing but frolic, drink, and ride about 
the country, Mrs Proctoi ploughed, planted and gathered in 
the crop. But for her energy and industry, it is much 
to be feared that Mr Proctor’s aristocratic habits would 
have soon made himself and his family a burden upon the 
county. 

Cassy’s services were a great accession to this estab- 
lishment. Her new mistress seemed resolved to make the 
most of them ; and the poor girl before long, was almost 
completely broken down, by a degree and a kind of labor 
to which she was totally unaccustomed. Two or three times 
a week, at least, Mr Proctor cam6 home drunk ; and on 
these occasions, he blustered about, threatened his wife, and 
beat and abused his children without any sort of mercy.* 
Gassy could hardly expect to come off better than they 
did ; — indeed his drunken abuse would have become quite 
intolerable, if the energetic Mrs Proctor had not known how 
to quell it. At first, she used mild measures, and coaxed 
and flattered him into quiet ; but when these means failed, 
she would tumble him into bed by main strength, and 
compel him to lie still by the terror of the broom-stick. 

It was nothing but the wholesome authority, which Mrs 
Proctor exercised over her husband, that protected Gassy 
against what she dreaded even more than Mr Proctor’s 
drunken rudeness. Whenever he could find her alone, he 
tormented her with solicitations of a most distressing kind ; 
and nothing could rid her of his importunities, except the 
threat of complaining to Mrs Proctor. But her troubles, 
did not end even here. Mrs Proctor listened to her com- 
plaints, thanked her for the information, and said she would 
speak to Mr Proctor about it. But she could not imagine 


A FUGITIVE. 


143 


that a slave could possibly be endowed with the slightest 
particle of that virtue, of which the free women of Virginia 
boast the exclusive possession. Full of this notion, she 
judged it highly improbable, whatever merit Gassy might 
pretend to claim, that she had actually resisted the impor- 
tunities and solicitations of so very seducing a fellow as 
Mr Proctor ; and filled with all the spite and fury of 
female jealousy, she delighted herself with tormenting the 
object of her suspicions. Mrs Proctor, with all her merit, 
had one little foible which, most likely, she had adopted 
out of compliment to her husband. She thought a daily 
dram of whiskey necessary to keep off the fever and ague ; 
and when through inadvertence, as sometimes would happen, 
she doubled the dose, it seemed to give a new edge to the 
natural keenness of her temper. On these occasions, she 
plied both words and blows with a fearful energy ; and 
though perhaps it were difficult to say which of the two 
was most to be dreaded, both together they were enough to 
exhaust the patience of a saint. 

Poor Gassy could discover no means of delivering her- 
self from this complication of miseries, under which she 
was ready to sink, when she was most unexpectedly re- 
lieved, by the unsolicited interference of a couple of Mr 
Proctor’s neighbors. They were men of leisure like him ; 
like him too, they were of good families, and one of them 
had received an excellent education, and was more or less 
distantly connected with several of the most distinguished 
people in the state. But a course of reckless dissipation 
had long ago stripped them of such property as they had 
inherited, and reduced them to live by their wits ; which 
they exercised in a sort of partnership, principally on the 
race-course and at the gaming-table. 

These two speculating gentlemen were on terms of inti- 
macy with Mr Proctor, and they knew that he had a free 
woman, for such they supposed Gassy to be, living at his 
house. In common with most Virginians, they considered 
the existence of a class of freed people as a great social 
annoyance, and likely enough in the end, seriously to 
endanger those ‘ sacred rights of property,’ in defence of 
which there is nothing, which a true-born son of liberty 


144 


MEMOIRS OF 


ought not to be proud to undertake. Instigated doubtless, 
by such patriotic notions, these public-spirited persons 
judged that they would be rendering the state a service, — 
to say nothing of the money they might put into their own 
pockets, — ’by applying to this great political evil, so far at 
least as Gassy was a party to it, a remedy, which the 
doctrines of more than one of the Virginian statesmen, and 
the spirit of more than one of the Virginian statutes, would 
seem fully to sanction. In plain English, they resolved to 
seize Gassy, and sell her for a slave I 

The business of kidnapping is one of the natural fruits 
of the American system of slavery ; and is as common, 
and as well organized in several parts of the United States, 
as the business of horse-stealing is, in many other countries. 
When they take to stealing slaves, the operations of these 
adventurers become very hazardous ; but while they confine 
themselves to stealing only free people, they can pursue 
their vocation with' comparatively little danger. They may 
perhaps inflict some trifling personal wrong ; — ^but accord- 
ing to the doctrines of some of the most popular among 
the American politicians, they are doing the public no incon- 
siderable service ; since, in their opinion, nothing seems to 
be wanting to render the slave-holding states of America a 
perfect paradise, except the extermination of the emanci- 
pated class. It was no doubt, by some such lofty notions 
of the public good, that Gassy’s friends were actuated. At 
all events, those sophistries which tyranny has invented to 
justify oppression, are as much an apology for them as for 
any one else. 

As far as Gassy could learn, their scheme was pretty 
much as follows. They invited Mr Proctor to a drinking 
frolic, and as soon as the whiskey had reduced him to a 
state of insensibility, a message was sent to his wife that 
her husband was taken dangerously ill, and that she must 
instantly come to his assistance. Notwithstanding a few 
domestic jars, Mr and Mrs Proctor were a most loving 
couple ; and the good woman, greatly alarmed at this un- 
expected news, immediately set out to visit her husband. 
The conspirators had followed their own messenger, and 
were concealed in a thicket close to the house watching for 


A FUGITIVE. 


145 


her departure. She was hardly out of sight, before they 
rushed into the field where Gassy was at work, bound her, 
hand and foot, put her into a sort of covered wagon or 
carry-all, which they had provided for the occasion, and 
drove ofif as fast as possible. They travelled all that day, 
and the following night. Early the next morning, they 
reached a small village where they met a slave-trader with 
a gang of slaves, on his way to Richmond. The gentle- 
men-thieves soon struck up a bargain with the gentleman 
slave-trader ; and having received their money, they de- 
livered Gassy into his possession. 

He seemed touched with her beauty and her distress, and 
treated her with a kindness which she hardly expected 
from one of his profession. Her shoes and clothes were 
nearly worn out. He bought her new ones ; and as she 
was half dead with fatigue, terror and want of sleep, he 
even went so far as to wait a day at the village, in order 
that she might recover a little before setting .out on the 
journey to Richmond. 

But she soon found that she was expected to make a 
return for these favors. When they stopped for the night, 
at the end of the first day’s journey, she received an inti- 
mation that she was to share the bed of her master; and 
directions were given to her how and when to come there. 
These directions she saw fit to disregard. In the morn- 
ing her master called her to account. He laughed in her 
face, when she spoke of the wickedness of what he had 
commanded, and told her he did not want her to be preach- 
ing any of her sermons to him. He would excuse her dis- 
obedience this time ; but she must take very good care not 
to repeat it. 

The next evening she received directions similar to those 
which had been given the day before ; and again she dis- 
obeyed them. Her master, \yho had been drinking and 
gambling half the night, with some boon companions whom 
he found at the tavern, enraged at not finding her in his 
room as he had expected, sallied forth in pursuit of her. 
Luckily he was too -drunk to know very well where he was 
going. He had gone but a few steps from the tavern door, 
before he stumbled over a pile of wood^ and injiired him- 


146 


MEMOIRS OF 


self very seriously. His cries soon brought some of the 
tavern’s people to his assistance. They carried him to his 
room, bound up his bruises, and put him to bed. 

It was late the next morning before he was able to rise ; 
but he was no sooner up than he resolved to take ample 
vengeance for his disappointment and his bruises. He came 
hobWing to the tavern door, with a crutch in one hand and 
a whip in the other. He had all his slaves paraded before 
the house ; and made two of the stoutest fellows among 
them hold Gassy by the arms, while he plied the whip. 
Her cries soon collected the idlers and loungers, who seem 
to constitute the principal population of a Virginian vil- 
lage. Some inquired the cause of the whipping, but 
without seeming to think the question of consequence 
enough to wait for an answer. It seemed to be the general 
opinion that the master was tipsy, and had chosen this way 
to vent his drunken humors ; but whether drunk or sober, 
nobody thought of interfering with his ‘sacred and unques- 
tionable rights.’ On the contrary, all looked on with 
unconcern, if not with approbation ; and the greater number 
seemed as much pleased with the sport, as so many boys 
would have been, with the baiting of an unlucky cat. 

Just in the midst of this proceeding, a handsome travel- 
ling carriage drove up to the door. There were two ladies 
in it ; and they no sooner saw what was going on, than 
with that humanity, so natural to the female heart that not 
even the horrid customs and detestable usages of slave- 
holding tyranny can totally extinguish it, they begged the 
brutal savage to leave beating the poor girl, and tell them 
what was the matter. 

The fellow reluctantly dropped the lash, and answered 
in a surly tone, that she was an insolent disobedient bag- 
gage, not fit to be noticed by two such ladies, and that he 
was only giving her a little wholesome correction. 

However, this did not seem to satisfy them ; and in the 
mean time the carriage steps were let down and they got 
out. Poor Gassy was sobbing and crying and scarcely 
able to utter a word ; her hair had fallen down over her 
face and shoulders ; and her cheek% were all stained with 
tears. Yet even in this situation, the two ladies seemed 


A FUGITIVE. 


147 


struck with her appearance. They entered into conversa- 
tion with her, and soon found that she had been bred a 
ladies’ maid, and that her present master was a slave-trader. 
These ladies, it seemed, had been travelling at the north ; 
and while on their journey, had lost a female servant by a 
sudden and violent attack of fever. They were . now on 
their return to Carolina ; and the younger of the two, sug- 
gested to her mother — for such their relation proved to be 
— to buy Gassy to supply the place of the maid they had 
lost. The mother started some objections to purchasing a 
stranger, about whom they knew nothing, and who had 
been sold by her former owner, they knew not for what 
reasons. But when Cassy’s tears, prayers and supplica- 
tions, were added to the entreaties of her daughter, she 
found herself quite unable to resist ; and she sent to ask the 
man his price. He named it. It was a high one. But 
Mrs Montgomery — for that was the lady’s name — ^was one 
of those people, who when they have made up their minds 
to do a generous action, are not easily to be shaken from 
their purpose. She took Gassy into the house with her, 
ordered the trunks to be brought in, and told the man to 
make out his bill of sale. The purchase vvas^|^ sooner 
completed, than her new mistress took Gassy up stairs, and 
soon fitted her with a dress better becoming her new situa- 
tion, than did the coarse gown and heavy shoes for which 
she was indebted to the disinterested generosity of her late 
master. 

Gassy was dressed, the bill of sale was delivered, and 
the money paid, when IMrs Montgomery’s brother and trav- 
elling companion rode up. He rallied his sister not a little, 
on what he called her foolish propensity to interfere between 
other people and their servants ; he took her to task rather 
severely, for the imprudence of her purchase, and the high 
price she had paid ; and he told her with a smile and a 
shake of the head, that one time or other, her foolish confi- 
dence and generosity would be her ruin. Mrs Montgomery 
took her brother’s raillery all in good part ; the carriage was 
ordered, and they proceeded together on their journey. 

The ladies with whom Gassy had come to the meeting, 
wei-e Mrs Montgomery and her daughter. They lived 


148 


MEMOIRS OF 


some ten miles from Carleton-Hall. So near had Gassy 
and myself been to each other for six long months or more, 
without knowing it. Gassy spoke of her mistress with the 
greatest affection. Her gratitude was unbounded ; and she 
seemed to find a real pleasure and enjoyment in serving a 
benefactress who treated her with a gentle and uniform 
kindness, not often exerted even by those who are capable 
'of momentary acts of the greatest generosity. 

As Gassy finished her story, she threw her arms about 
my neck, leaned her head upon my bosom, and looking me 
in the face, while the tears were streaming from her eyes, 
she heaved a sigh, and whispered, that she was too, too 
happy ! With such a mistress, and restored so unexpect- 
edly to the arms of a husband, whom, fondly as she loved 
him, she feared to have lost forever, what more could she 
desire ! 

Alas poor girl ! — she forgot that we were slaves ; — and 
that the very next day might again separate us, subject us 
to other masters, and renew her sufferings, and my miseries! 


m 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Before we had half finished what we had to say to 
each other, the movement of the people on the hill-side 
informed us that the morning’s religious services were over. 
Never before had one of my master’s sermons seemed so 
short to me. We hastened towards the spot ; I to receive 
my master’s ordei-s, and Gassy to attend upon her mistress. 
As we came near the rural pulpit, I observed Mr Garleton 
in conversation with two ladies, who proved to be Mrs 
Montgomery and her daughter. We stopped at a little 
distance from them. INliss Montgomery looked around, 
and seeing us standing together, she beckoned to Gassy, 
and pointing to me, she inquired if that was the husband, 
who had put her into such a flutter that morning ? This 
question drew the notice of the other two ; and my master 
seemed a little surprised at seeing me in this new character. 


A FUGITIVE. 


149 


^‘What’s this, Archy,” he said, “what is the meaning of all 
this? It is the first I ever heard of your being married. 
You don’t prelend to claim that pretty girl there for your 
wife ? ” 

I replied that she was indeed, my wife, though it was 
now some two years or more, since we had seen or known 
any thing of each other. I added, that I had never men- 
tioned my marriage to him, because I had despaired of ever 
seeing my wife again ; and now, it was nothing but the 
merest accident that had brought us together. 

“Well, Archy, if she is your wife, I don’t know how I 
can help it, though I suppose I shall have you spending 
half your time at Poplar-Grove ; — is not that what your 
place is called, Mrs Montgomery ? ” 

She said it was ; — and after a moment’s pause, observed, 
that too little respect, she feared, was often paid to the 
matrimonial connexions of servants. For her part, she 
could not but regard them as sacred ; and if Gassy and 
myself were really married, and I was a decent, civil fellow, 
she had no objection to my visiting Poplar-Grove, as often 
as Mr Carleton would permit. 

My master undertook to answer for my good behavior ; 
and turning to me, he bade me bring up the horses. I 
made all the haste I could; but before I returned, Mrs 
Montgomery was gone, and Gassy with her. We mount- 
ed, and had already taken the road to Garleton-Hall, when 
my master seemed to recollect that I had just found a wife 
from whom I had been long separated ; and it began to 
occur to him, that possibly we might take some pleasure in 
being indulged with a little of one another’s company. He 
gave me joy of my discovery, with an air half serious, half 
jocose, — as if in doubt whether a slave were properly enti- 
tled to a master’s serious sympathy, — and remarked, in a 
careless tone, that perhaps I would like to spend the 
remainder of the day at P^lar-Grove. 

As I knew that Mr Garlelon had much real goodness of 
heart, I had long since learned to put up with his cavalier 
manner ; and however little 1 might be pleased with the 
style in which he made the offer, the matter of his 
present proposal was so much to my fancy, that I eagerly 
13 * 


150 


MEMOIRS OF 


caught at it. He took his pencil from his pocket, and 
wrote me a pass ; I asked and received such directions as 
he could give me about the way ; and putting spurs to my 
horse, I soon overtook Mrs Montgomery’s carriage, which I 
followed to Poplar-Grove. 

This was one of those pretty, and even elegant country 
seats, which are sometimes seen, though very seldom, in 
Virginia and the Carolinas ; and which may serve to prove 
that the inhabitants of those states, notwithstanding their 
almost universal negligence of such matters, are not totally 
destitute of all ideas of architectural beauty and domestic 
comfort. The approach to the house was through a broad 
avenue of old and venerable oaks. The buildings had the 
appearance of considerable antiquity ; but they were in 
perfect repair, and the grounds and fences were neat and 
well kept. 

As the ladies left the carriage, I came up. I told Mrs 
Montgomery that my master had given me leave to visit 
my wife, and I hoped she would have no objection to my 
spending the afternoon there. 

Mrs Montgomery answered, that Gassy was too good a 
girl to be denied any reasonable indulgence ; and as long 
as I behaved well, she would never make any objection to 
my coming to see her. She put me several questions about 
our marriage and separation ; and the softness of her voice 
and the unassuming gentleness of her manner, satisfied me 
that she was an amiable and kind-hearted woman. 

No doubt, through the broad extent of slave-holding 
America, there are many .amiable women and kind-hearted 
mistresses. Yet how little does their kindness avail ! It 
reaches only here and there. It has no power to alleviate 
the wretchedness, or to diminish the sufie rings of myriads 
of wretches, who never hear a voice softer than the over- 
seer’s, and who know no discipline milder than the lash. 

The house servants at Poplar-Grove, were treated with 
kindness and even with indulgence, and were much at- 
tached to the family ; but as happens in so many other 
cases, the situation of the field hands was extremely difter- 
ent. Some three years before, Mrs Montgomery, by her hus- 
band’s death, and the will which he left, became tlie owner 


A FUGITIVE. 


151 


and sole mistress of the estate. Upon this occasion, her 
good nature, and her sense of justice, prompted her to 
extend the same humane system to the management of the 
plantation, which she had always acted upon, in the gov- 
ernment of her own household. During her husband’s life, 
the servants’ quarter had been three miles or more from the 
House ; and as the slaves were never allowed to come 
there, unless they were sent for, Mrs Montgomery saw 
scarcely any thing of them, and knew very little of their 
wants and grievances, and next to nothing of the general 
management of the estate. Indeed she spent the greater 
portion of every year, in visiting her relations in Virginia, or 
in trips to the northern cities ; and when at home, her 
husband’s manifest disinclination to her having any thing to 
do with those matters, had always prevented her from med- 
dling in any way, with the plantation affairs. 

But when her husband was dead, and the plantation and 
slaves had become her own property, she could not recon- 
cile herself to the idea of taking no thought, concern or care 
for the welfare and well-being of more than a hundred 
human creatures, who toiled from morning to night for her 
sole benefit. She resolved upon a total change of system ; 
and ordered the servants’ quarter to be removed near the 
house, so that she might be able to go there daily, and have 
an opportunity of inspecting and relieving the wants and 
grievances of her servants. 

She was shocked at the miserable pittance of food and 
clothing which her husband had allowed them, and at the 
amount of labor which he had exacted. She ordered their 
allowances to be increased, and their tasks to be diminished. 
Several instances of outrageous severity having reached her 
ears, she dismissed her overseer and procured a new one. 
The servants no sooner discovered that their mistress had 
interested herself in their welfare, than she was overwhelm- 
ed with petitions, appeals and complaints. One wanted a 
blanket, another a kettle, and a third, a pair of shoes. 
Each asked for some trifling gift, which it seemed very 
hard to refuse ; and every request that was granted was 
followed by half-a-dozen others, equally trifling and equally 
reasonable* But before the end of the year, these small 


152 


3ij<:moirs of 


Items amounted to a sum sufficient to swallow up half the 
usual profits of the plantation. Scarcely a day passed, that 
Mrs Montgomery was not pestered with complaints about 
the severity of her new overseer ; and the servants were 
constantly coming to her to beg off from some threatened 
punishment. Two or three instances in which the overseer 
was checked for the tyrannical manner in which he exer- 
cised his authority, only served to increase this annoyance. 
She was perplexed with continual appeals, as to which she 
found it next to impossible to get at the truth ; since the 
overseer always told one story, and the servants another. 
The second overseer was dismissed ; a thii’d threw up his 
place in disgust ; and a fourth, who resolved to humor the 
indulgent disposition of his employer, suffered the hands to 
take their own course and to do pretty much as they 
pleased. Of course they did not care to work, while they 
had the choice of being idle. Every season, since Mrs 
Montgomery had commenced her experiments, the crop had 
fallen lamentably short ; but that year, there was scarcely 
any crop at all. 

Her friends now thought it time to interfere. Her 
brother, whom she loved, and for whose opinion and advice 
she entertained a high regard, had all along, remonstrated 
againsf the course she was pursuing. He now spoke in a 
more decided tone. He told her, that the silly notions she 
had taken up about the happiness of her slaves, would cer- 
tainly ruin her. Where was the need of being more hu- 
mane than her neighbors ? — and what folly could be greater 
than to reduce herself and her children to beggary, in the 
vain pursuit of a sentimental and impracticable scheme ? 

Mrs Montgomery defended herself and her conduct with 
great earnestness. She pleaded her duty towards those 
unhappy beings whom God had placed in her power and 
under her protection. She even went so far as to hint at 
the injustice of living in luxury upon the fruits of forced 
labor ; and she spoke with much feeling of the savage bru- 
tality of overseers, and the torture of the lash. Her brother 
replied, that such talk was very pretty, and generous, and 
philanthropic, and all that ; and while it went no further 
than talk, he had not the least objection to it. But pretty 


A FUGITIVE. 


153 


and philanthropic as it was, it would not make either corn 
or tobacco. She might talk as she pleased ; but if she ex- 
pected to live by her plantation, she must manage it like 
other people. Every body who knew any thing about the 
matter would tell her, that if she wished to make a crop she 
must keep a smart overseer, put a whip into his hands, and 
give him unlimited authority to use it. If she would do 
this, she might justly call herself the mistress of the planta- 
tion ; but as long as she followed her present plan, she 
would be no better than the slave of her own servants and 
her philanthropy would end in their being sold for debt, and 
in her being left a beggar. 

These warm remonstrances made a deep impression 
upon Mrs JMontgomery. She could not deny that the 
plantation had produced scarcely any thing since she had 
come into possession of it ; and she was conscfous that after 
all her labors in their behalf, her servants were discontent- 
ed, idle and insubordinate. However, she did not feel 
inclined to yield the point. She still maintained that her 
ideas on the mutual relation of master and servant, were 
the obvious dictates of justice and humanity, which no one 
could despise or overlook, who made any pretensions to 
virtue or to conscience. She argued that the system, which 
she was attempting to introduce, was a good one ; and that 
nothing was wanting except an overseer who had sense 
enough to carry it into judicious operation. Possibly there 
was something of truth in this. If she could have found a 
man like major Thornton, and made an overseer of him, 
she might perhaps have succeeded. But such men are 
seldom found any where, and in slave-holding America, 
very seldom indeed. Take the American overseers to- 
gether, and they are the most ignorant, intractable, stupid, 
obstinate, and self-willed race that ever existed. What 
could a woman do, who could only act through assistance 
of this sort, and who had the prejudices of the whole neigh- 
borhood actively excited against her ? Things went on from 
bad to worse. The ready money which her husband had 
left was all spent, and her aftairs soon became so entangled 
and embarrassed, that she was obliged to call upon her 
brother for assistance. He refused in the most positive 


154 


MEMOIRS OF 


manner, to have any thing to do with the business, unless 
she would surrender to him the sole and exclusive manage- 
ment of her affairs. To these hard terms, after a short and 
ineffectual struggle, she was obliged to consent. 

He immediately took the plantation into his own hands. 
He removed the cabins to their former situation ; revived 
the old rule that no servant should ever go to the House 
unless specially sent for ; reduced them to their former al- 
lowance of food and clothing ; and engaged an overseer on 
the express condition that Mrs Montgomery should never 
listen to any complaints against him, or intermeddle, in any 
way, with his management of the plantation. 

Within the first month after this return to the old system, 
near one third of the working hands were runaways. Mrs 
Montgomery's brother told her, that this was no more than 
might be expected ; for the rascals had been so spoiled and 
indulged as to render them quite impatient of the necessary 
and wholesome severity of plantation discipline. After 
long searching, and a good deal of trouble and expense, the 
runaways, except one or two, were finally recovered ; and 
Poplar-Grove, under its new administration, passed by de- 
grees to its ancient routine of whipping and hard labor. 
Once in a while, notwithstanding all the pains that were 
taken to prevent it, some instance of severity would reach 
the ear of Mrs Montgomery ; and in the first burst of in- 
dignant feeling, she would sometimes declare, that the 
narrowest poverty would be far better, than the wealth and 
luxury for which she was indebted to the whip of the slave- 
driver. But these exclamations of generous passion were 
scarcely uttered, before she acknowledged to herself, that 
to think of giving up the luxury to which she had been 
accustomed from her infancy, was out of the question. She 
strove to escape from the knowledge, and to banish the 
recollection of injustice and cruelty, which her heart con- 
demned, but which _she lacked the power, or rather the 
spirit, to remedy. She fled from a home, where she was 
forever haunted by the spectre of that delegated tyranny, 
for which, however she might attempt to deny or disguise 
it, she could not but feel herself responsible ; and while her 
slaves toiled beneath the burning sun of a Carolina summer, 


A FUGITIVE. 


155 


and smarted under the lash of a stem and relentless over- 
seer, she attempted to drown the remembrance of their 
wrongs, in the dissipations and gaieties of Saratoga or 
New York. 

But she was obliged to spend jp part of the year at Pop- 
lar-Grove ; and with all her care, she could not always 
save her feelings from some rude brushes. Of this I had 
a striking instance on my first visit. One of her plantation 
hands had been so far indulged by the overseer, who, by 
the way, was a very rigid presbyterian, as to receive a pass 
to attend Mr Carleton’s meeting. After the meeting was 
over, his mistress happened to see him there ; and as she 
wished to send a message to one of her neighbors, she called 
him to her, and sent him with it. It so happened that 
Mrs Montgomery’s overseer, was at this neighbor’s, when 
the servant arrived there with his mistress’s message. The 
overseer no sooner saw him, than he inquired what business 
he had to come there, when his pass only allowed him to 
go to the meeting and back again. It was in vain that he 
pleaded his mistress’s orders. The overseer said that made 
no difference whatever; for Mrs Montgomery had nothing at 
all to do with the plantation hands ; and to impress this fact 
upon his memory, he gave him a dozen lashes on the spot. 

The poor fellow was bold enough to come to the House, 
and make his complaint to Mrs Montgomery. Nothing 
could exceed her anger and vexation. But her agreement 
with her brother left her without a remedy. She made the 
servant a handsome present ; told him that he had been 
very unjustly punished ; and begged him to go home and 
say nothing about it to any body. She submitted to the 
mortification of making this request, in hopes of saving the 
poor' fellow from a second punishment. But by some 
means or other, as I learned afterwards, the overseer found 
out what had been going on ; and to vindicate his supreme 
authority, and keep up the discipline of the plantation, he 
inflicted a second whipping more severe than the first. 

Such is the malignant nature and disastrous operation of 
the slave-holding system, that in too many instances, the 
smcerest good will, and best intended efforts in the slave’s 
behalf, end only in plunging him into deeper miseries. It 


156 


MEMOIRS OF 


is 'impossible to build any edifice of good upon so evil a 
foundation. The whole system is totally and radically 
wrong. The benevolence, the good nature, the humanity 
of a slave-holder, avail as little as the benevolence of tlie 
bandit, who generously cl?)thes the stripped and naked trav- 
eller in a garment plundered from his own portmanteau. 
What grosser absurdity than the attempt to be humanely 
cruel, and generously unjust ! The very first act in the 
slave’s behalf, without which, all else is useless and worse 
than useless, is — to make him free ! 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

I HAVE before observed that Sunday is the slave’s holi- 
day. Where intermarriages are allowed between the slaves 
of different plantations, this is generally the only occasion 
on which the scattered branches of the same family are in- 
dulged with an opportunity of visiting each other. Many 
planters, who pride themselves upon the excellence of their 
discipline, forbid these intermarriages altogether ; and if they 
happen to have a superabundance of men-servants, they 
prefer that one woman should have a half-a-dozen husbands 
rather than suffer their slaves to be corrupted, by gadding 
about among other people’s plantations. 

Other managers, just as good disciplinarians, and a little 
more shrewd than their neighbors, forbid the men only to 
marry away from home." They are very willing to let their 
women get husbands where they can. They reason in this 
way. When a husband goes to see his wife, who lives 
upon another plantation, he will not be apt to go empty- 
handed. He will carry something with him, probably 
something eatable, plundered from his master’s fields, that 
may serve to make him welcome, and render his coming a 
sort of festival. Now every thing that is brought upon a 
plantation in this way, is so much clear gain ; and so far as 
it goes, it amounts to feeding one’s people at the expense 
of one’s neighbors I 


A FUGITIVE. 


157 


Sunday, as I have said, is the day upon which are paid 
the matrimonial visits of the slave. But Sunday was no 
holiday to me ; for I was generally obliged, on that day, to 
attend my master upon his ecclesiastical excursions. To 
make up for this, Mr Carleton alfowed me Thursday after- 
noons, so that I was able to visit Gassy at least once a 
week. 

The year that followed, was the happiest of my life ; and 
with all the inevitable mortifications and miseries, which 
slavery, even under its least repulsive form, ever carries 
with it, 1 still look back to that year with pleasure, — a 
pleasure that yet has power to warm a heart, saddened and 
embittered by a thousand painful recollections. 

Before the end of the year. Gassy made me a father. 
The infant boy had all his mother’s beauty ; and only he 
who is a father, and as fond a husband too as I was, can 
know the feelings with which I pressed the little darling to 
my heart. 

No ! — ^no one can know my feelings, — no one, alas, but 
he, who is, as I was, the father of a slave. The father of 
a slave ! — And is it true then, that this child of my hopes 
and wishes, this pledge of mutual love, this dear, dear infant 
of whom I am the father, is it true he is not mine ? 

Is it not my duty and my right, a right and duty dearer 
than life, to watch over his helpless infancy, and to rear 
him with all a father’s tenderness and love, to a manhood, 
that will perhaps repay my care, and in turn, sustain and 
cherish me, a tottering weak old man ? 

My duty it may be ; but it is not my right. A slave 
can have no rights. His wife, his child, his toil, his blood, 
his life, and every thing that gives his life a value, they are 
not his ; he holds them all but at his master’s pleasure. 
He can possess nothing ; and if there is any thing he seems 
to have, it is only by a sufferance which exists but in his 
owner’s will. 

This very child, this very tender babe, maybe torn from 
my arms, and sold to-morrow into the hands of a stranger, 
and I shall have no right to interfere. Or if not so ; if 
some compassion be yielded to his infancy, and if he be 
not snatched from his father’s embraces and his mother’s 
14 


158 


MEMOIRS OF 


l)osom while he is yet all unconscious of his misery, yet 
what a sad, wretched, desolate fate awaits him ! . Shut out 
from every chance or hope of any thing which it is worth 
one’s while to live for ; — bred up a slave ! 

A slave ! — ^That single word, what volumes it does speak ! 
It speaks of chains, of whips and tortures, compulsive labor, 
hunger and fatigues, and all the miseries our wretched 
bodies suffer. It speaks of haughty power, and insolent 
commands ; of insatiate avarice ; of pampered pride and 
purse-proud luxury ; and of the cold indifference and scorn- 
ful unconcern with which the oppressor looks down upon 
his victims. It speaks of crouching fear, and base servility ; 
of low, mean cunning, and treacherous revenge. It speaks 
of humanity outraged ; manhood degraded ; the social 
charities of life, the sacred ties of father, wife and child 
trampled under foot ; of aspirations crushed ; of hope ex- 
tinguished ; and the light of knowledge sacrilegiously put 
out. It speaks of man deprived of all that makes him 
amiable or makes him noble ; stripped of his soul, and 
sunk into a beast. 

And thou, my child, to this fate thou art born ! May 
heaven have merc)» on thee, for man has none ! 

The first burst of instinctive and thoughtless pleasure, 
with which I had looked upon my infant boy, was dissipa- 
ted forever, the moment I had recovered myself enough to 
recollect what he was born to. Various and ever changing, 
but always wretched and distressing were the feelings with 
which I gazed at him, as he slept upon his mother’s bosom, 
or waking, smiled at her caresses. He was indeed a pretty 
baby ; — a dear, dear child ; — and for his mother’s sake I 
loved him, how I loved him ! Yet struggle as I might, I 
could not, for a moment, escape the bitter thought of what 
his fate must be. F ull well I knew that did he live to be 
a man, he would repay my love, and justly, with curses, 
curses on the father who had bestowed upon him nothing 
but a life incumbered and made worse than worthless, by 
the inheritance of slavery. 

I found no longer the same pleasure in Cassy’s society, 
which it used to afford me ; or rather the pleasure which I 
could not but take in it, was intermingled with much new 


A FUGITIVE. 


159 


misery. I did not love her less ; but the birth of that boy 
had infused fresh bitterness into the cup of servitude. 
Whenever I looked upon him, my mind was filled with 
horrid images. The whole future seemed to come visibly 
before me. I saw him naked, chained, and bleeding under 
the lash ; I saw him a wretched, trembling creature, cringing 
to escape it ; I saw him utterly debased, and the spirit of 
manhood extinguished within him ; already he appeared 
that worthless thing, — a slave contented with his fate ! 

I could not bear it. I started up in a phrensy of pas- 
sion ; I snatched the child from the arms of his mother, and 
while I loaded him with caresses, 1 looked about for the 
means of extinguishing a life, which, as it was an emana- 
tion from my existence, seemed destined to be only a pro- 
longation of my misery. 

My eyes rolled wildly, I doubt not ; and the stem spirit 
of my deteraiination must have been visibly marked upon 
my face ; for gentle and unsuspicious as she was, and 
wholly incapable of that wild passion which tore my heart, 
my wife, with a mother’s instinctive watchfulness, seemed 
to catch some glimpse of my intention. She rose up hasti- 
ly, and without speaking a word, she caught the baby from 
my feeble and trembling grasp ; and as she pressed it to 
her bosom, she gave a look that told me all that she feared ; 
and told me too, that the mother’s life was bound up jn that 
of the child. 

That look subdued me. My arms dropped powerless, 
and I sunk down in a sort of sullen stupor. I had been 
prevented from accomplishing my purpose, but I was not 
satisfied that in foregoing it, I did a father’s duty to the 
child. The more I thought upon it — and it so engrossed 
me that I could scarcely, draw my thoughts away, — the 
more was I convinced that it were better for the boy to 
die. And if the deed did peril my own soul, I loved the 
child so well I did not shrink, even at that 1 

But then his mother ? 

I would have reasoned with her ; but I knew how vain 
would be the labor to array a woman’s judgment against a 
mother’s feelings'; and I felt, that one tear stealing down 
her cheek, one look of hers, like that she gave me when 


160 


MEMOIRS OF 


she snatched the child away, would, even in my own mind, 
far outbalance the weightiest of my arguments. 

The idea of rescuing the boy, by one bold act, from all 
the bitter miseries that impended over him, had shot upon 
my mind, like some faint struggling star across the darkness 
of a midnight storm. But that glimmer of comfort was 
now extinguished. The child must live. The life I gave 
him, I must not take away. No ! not thougli every day 
of it would draw new curses on my devoted head, — and 
those too, the curses of my child. This, this alas ! is the 
barbed arrow that still is sticking in my heart ; the fatal, 
fatal wound, that nought can heal. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

One Sunday morning when the boy was about three 
months old, two strangers unexpectedly arrived at Carle- 
ton- Hall. In consequence of their coming, some urgent 
business occupied my master’s attention, so that he found 
himself obliged to give up the meeting which he had 
appointed for that day. I was not sorry for it ; for it left 
me at liberty to visit my wife and child. 

It was the autumn. The heat of summer had abated, 
and the morning was bright and balmy. There was a 
soothing softness in the air ; and the woods were clothed in 
a gay variety of colors, that almost outvied the foliage of the 
spring. As I rode along towards Poplar-Grove, the seren- 
ity of the sky, and the beauty of the prospect, seemed to 
breathe a peaceful pleasure to my heart. It was the more 
needed ; for I had been a go6d deal irritated by some 
occurrences during the week ; and every new indignity to 
which my situation exposed me, I now seemed to suffer 
twice over, once in my own person, and a second time, in 
anticipation for my child. I had set out in no very agree- 
able frame of mind ; but the ride, the prospect, and the 
fine autumnal air, had soothed me into a* cheerful alacrity 
of spirit, such as I had hardly felt for some weeks before. 


A FUGITIVE. 


161 


Gassy welcomed me with a ready smile, and those ca- 
resses which a fond wife bestows so freely on the husband 
whom she loves. Her mistress, the day before, had given 
her some new clothes for the child, and she had just been 
dressing him out, to make the little fellow fit, she said, to 
see his father. She brought the boy and placed him on 
my knee. She praised his beauty ; and with her arm 
about my neck, she tried to trace his father’s features in the 
baby’s face. In the full flow of a mother’s fond affection 
she seemed unconscious and forgetful of the future ; and by 
a thousand tender caresses, and all the little artifices of a 
woman’s love, she sought to make me forget it too. She 
had but little success. The sight of that poor, smiling, 
helpless and unconscious child, brought back all my melan- 
choly feelings. Yet I could not bear to disappoint my 
wife’s hopes and efforts ; and to make her think herself 
successful, I strove to affect a cheerfulness I did not feel. 

The beauty of the day tempted us abroad. We walked 
among the fields and woods, carrying the child by turns. 
Gassy had a hundred little things to tell me of the first 
slight indications of intelligence which the boy was giving. 
She spoke with all a mother’s fluency and fervor. I said 
but little ; indeed I hardly dared to speak at all. Had I 
once begun, I could not have restrained myself from going 
on ; and I did not wish to poison her pleasure, by an out- 
pouring of that bitterness which I felt bubbling up, at the 
bottom of my heart. 

The hours stole away insensibly, and the sun was already 
declining. I had my master’s orders to be back; that night ; 
and it was time for me to go. I clasped the infant to my 
heart. I kissed Gassy’s cheek and pressed her hand. She 
seemed not satisfied with so cold a parting ; for she threw 
her arms about my neck and loaded me with embraces. 
This was so different from her usual coy and timid manner, 
tliat I was at a loss to understand it. Is it possible that she 
felt some instinctive presentiment of what was going to hap- 
pen ? Did the thought dart across her mind, that this might 
be our last, our final parting ? 

14 # 


162 


MEMOIRS OF 


CHAPTER XXV. 

When 1 got back to Carleton-Hall, I found every thing 
in the greatest confusion. It was not long before I was 
made acquainted with the cause. It seemed that some 
twelve months previous, Mr Carleton had found him^lf 
very much pressed for money. This had obliged him to 
look a little into his affairs. He found himself burdened 
with a load of debt of which before, he had no definite 
idea ; and as* his numerous creditors, who had been too 
long put off with promises, were beginning to be very clam- 
orous, he saw that some vigorous remedy was necessary. 
To borrow, seemed the most certain means of relief from 
the immediate pressure of his debts ; and he succeeded in 
obtaining a large loan from some Baltimore money-lenders, 
of which he secured the repayment by a mortgage upon his 
slaves, including even the house servants, and myself among 
the number. This money he expended in satisfying seve- 
ral executions, which had already issued against him ; and 
in stopping the mouths of the most clamorous of his credit- 
ors. The money was borrowed for a year ; not with any 
expectation on Mr Carleton’s part, of being able to repay it 
in that time, out of any funds of his own ; but in the hope 
that before the year’s end, he might succeed in obtaining a 
permanent loan, and so be enabled to cancel the mortgage. 

In this expectation, he had hitherto been disappointed ; 
and he was yet negotiating with the persons from whom he 
expected to borrow, when the time of repayment, mentioned 
in the mortgage, expired. This happened about a month 
previous ; and when I got back to Carleton-Hall, I found 
that the strangers who had arrived that morning, were the 
agents of the Baltimore money-lenders, who had been sent 
to take possession of the mortgaged property. They had 
already caught as many of the slaves as they could find ; 
and I no sooner entered the house, than I was seized, anti 
put under a guard. These precautions were thought neces- 
sary to prevent the slaves from running away, or concealing 
themselves from the agents of their new owners. 


A FUGITIVE. 


163 


My poor master was in the greatest distress and embar- 
rassment that could be imagined. It was in vain that he 
begged for delays and proposed various terms of accommo- 
dation. The agents declared that they had no discretion 
in the matter ; they were instructed to get either the money 
or the slaves ; and in case the money was not forthcoming, 
to proceed with the slaves to Charleston, in South Carolina, 
which, at that time, was esteemed the best market for dis- 
posing of that commodity. 

As to paying the money at once, that was out of the 
question ; but Mr Carleton hoped that he might be able in 
the course of a few days, if not to obtain the loan for which 
he was negotiating, at least to get such temporary assistance 
as would enable him to discharge the mortgage. The 
agents agreed to give him twenty-four hours, but refused to 
wait any longer. Mr Carleton despaired of doing any 
thing in so short a time ; and did not think it worth his 
while to attempt it. The plantation hands must go ; there 
did not seem to be any remedy for that ; but he was very 
desirous to save his house servants from the slave-market, 
and he begged the agents not to leave him without a ser- 
vant to make his bed or cook his dinner. 

The agents replied that they were truly sorry for the 
disagreeable situation in which he found himself; but that, 
since the mortgage was made, several of the slaves included 
in the schedule were dead ; that some of the others seemed 
hardly worth the sum at which they had been valued ; that 
the price of slaves had fallen considerably since the mort- 
gage was made, and seemed likely to fall more ; and that 
every thing considered, they thought it more than doubtful 
whether the mortgaged property would be sufficient to sat- 
isfy the debt. However, they were desirous to indulge 
him as far as their duty to their principals would allow; and 
if he would pay the value of such of the slaves as he wished 
to retain, they had no objections to receive the money 
instead of the servants. 

Mr Carleton had not fifty dollars in the house ; but he 
immediately started off to see what he could borrow in the 
neighborhood. Wherever he went, he found that the news 
of what had happened, had preceded him. Beside? 


164 


MEMOIRS OF 


Baltimore mortgage, he was known to owe many other 
debts ; and his neighbors generally looked upon him as a 
ruined man. Of course, the greater part of them felt no 
inclination to lend him their money ; and in fact, very 
many of them were not so much better off than Mr Carle- 
ton as to have much money to lend. After riding about 
the greater part of the day, he succeeded in borrowing a 
few hundred dollars, on condition however, that he should 
secure the repayment by a mortgage of such slaves as he 
should redeem. He had returned to the house a little 
before I did, and was already considering with himself 
which of his slaves he should retain. He told me . that I 
had been a good and Imst-worthy servant ; and that he was 
very unwilling to part with me. But he had not money 
enough to redeem us all ; and his old nurse and her family 
were entitled to be retained in preference to any of the rest 
of us. Not only were their services the most essential to 
him, but the mother had long been a favorite servant, her 
children were born and bred in his family, and he consid- 
ered it a matter of conscience to keep them, at all events. 
The agents released those of the servants whom he selected. 
The rest of us were k^t confined, and received notice to 
be ready for a start, efrly the next morning. 

I had yet one hope. I thought if Mrs Montgomery 
could be informed of my situation she would certainly buy 
me. I mentioned it to my master. He told me not to 
flatter myself too much with that idea ; — for Mrs Mont- 
gomery already had more servants about her house than she 
had any kind of use for. However, he readily undertook 
to write her a note explaining my situation. It was de- 
spatched by a servant, and I waited with impatient hope for 
the answer. 

At last the messenger returned. Mrs Montgomery and 
her daughter had gone that morning to visit her brother, 
who lived some ten miles from Poplar-Grove, and they 
were expected to be absent three or four days. 1 believe I 
had heard something of this in the morning ; but in my 
hurry, confusion and excitement, it had escaped my 
memory. 

My last hope was now gone ; and as it went, the shock 


A FUGITIVE. 


165 


I felt was dreadful. Till that moment, I had concealed 
from myself, the rfiisery of my situation. I had been 
familiar with calamity, but this exceeded any thing I had 
ever suffered. It is true, I had once before been separated 
from my wife ; but my bodily pains, my delirium and fever 
had helped to blunt the agony of that separation. Now, I 
was torn from both wife and child ! — and that too, without 
any thing to call off my attention, or to deaden the torture 
of conscious agony. My heart swelled with impotent pas- 
sion, and beat as though it would leap from my bosom. 
My forehead glowed with a burning heat. I would have 
wept; but even that relief was denied me. The tears 
refused to flow ; the fever in my brain had parched them 
up. 

My first impulse was, to attempt making my escape. 
But my new masters were too well acquainted with the 
Dusiness of legal kidnapping, to give me an opportunity. 
We were all collected in one of the out-houses, and care- 
fully secured. With many of the plantation hands, this, 
was quite an unnecessary precaution. A large proportion 
of them were so sick and weary of the tyranny of Mr 
Carleton’s overseer, that they were glad of any change; 
and when their master made them a farewell visit, and 
began to condole with them upon their misfortune, several 
of them were bold enough to tell him that they thought it no 
misfortune at all ; for whatever might happen, they could 
not be worse treated than they had been by his overseer. 
Mr Carleton seemed not well pleased at this bold disclo- 
sure, and took his leave of us rather abruptly ; and certainly 
this piece of information could not have been very soothing 
to his feelings. 

At early dawn we were put into travelling order. A 
wagon carried the • provisions and the younger children. 
The rest of us were chained together, and proceeded in the 
usual fashion. 

It was a long journey, and we were two' or three weeks 
upon the road. Considering that we were slaves driven to 
market, we were treated on the whole, with unexpected 
humanity. At the end of the third or fourth day’s journey, 
the women and children were released from their chains ; » 


166 


MEMOIRS OF 


and two or three days later, a part of the men received the 
same indulgence. Those of us, of whom they were more 
suspicious, were still kept in irons. Uur -drivers seemed 
desirous to enhance our value by putting us into good con- 
dition. Our daily journey was quite moderate ; we were 
all furnished with shoes, and were allowed plenty to eat. 
At night we encamped by the road-side ; kindled a large 
fire, cooked our hominy, and made a hut of branches to 
sleep under. Several of the company declared that they 
were never so well treated in all their lives ; and they went 
along laughing and singing more like men travelling for 
pleasure, than like slaves going to be sold. So little accus- 
tomed is the slave to kindness or indulgence of any sort, 
that the merest trifle is enough to put him into ecstasy. 
The gift of a single extra meal is sufficient to make him 
fall in love even with a slave-driver. 

The songs and laughter of my companions only served 
to aggravate my melancholy. They observed it, and did 
their best to cheer me. There never was a kinder-hearted 
company, and I found some relief even in their rudh eflbrts 
at consolation ; for there is more power in the sympathy of 
the humblest human creature than the haughty children of 
luxury are apt to believe. I was a favorite among the 
servants at Carleton-Hall, because I had taken some little 
pains to be so ; for I had long since renounced that silly 
prejudice and foolish pride, which at an earlier period, had 
kept me aloof from my fellow servants, and had justly 
earned me their hatred and dislike. Experience had made 
me wiser ; and I no longer took sides with our oppressors 
by joining them in the false notion of their own natural 
superiority ; — a notion founded only in the arrogant preju- 
dice of conceited ignorance, and long since discarded by 
the liberal and enlightened ; but a notion which is still the 
orthodox creed of all America, and the principal, I might 
almost say the sole foundation, which sustains the iniqui- 
tous superstructure of American slavery. I had made it a 
point to gain the good will and aflection of my fellow ser- 
vants, by mixing among them ; taking an interest in all 
their concerns ; and rendering them such little services as 
% my favor with Mr Carleton put in my power. Once or 


A FUGITIVE. 


167 


twice indeed, I had overstepped the mark, and got myself 
into very serious trouble by letting my master know what 
severities his overseer inflicted. But though my attempts 
at serving them were not always successful, their gratitude 
W'as not the less on that account. 

When my companions observed my melancholy they 
stopped their songs, and having run through their few topics 
of condolence, they continued their conversation in a sub- 
dued and moderated tone, as if unwilling to irritate my 
feeling by what might seem to me, unseasonable merriment. 
I saw, and in my heart acknowledged the kindness of their 
intention ; but I did not wish that my sadness should cast 
a shade over what they enjoyed as a holiday, — the only 
holiday perhaps which their miserable fate would ever allow 
them. I told them that nothing would be so likely to cheer 
me, as to see them merry ; and though my heart was aching 
and ready almost to burst, I forced a laugh, and started a 
song. The rest joined in it ; the chorus rose again loud as 
ever ; the laugh went round ; and the turbulence of their mer- 
riment soon allowed me to sink again into a moody silence. 

I had the natural feelings of a man ; I loved my wife and 
child. Had they been snatched from me by death, or had I 
been separated from them, by some fixed, inevitable, natural 
necessity, I should have wept, no doubt, but my feelings 
would have been those of simple grief, unmixed with any 
more bitter emotion. But that the dear ties of husband 
and father, ties so twined about my inmost heart, should be 
thus violently severed, without a moment’s warning, and at 
a creditor’s caprice ; and he too the creditor of another ; 
to be thus chained up, torn from my home, and driven to 
market, there to be sold to pay the debts of a man who 
called himself my master ; — the thoughts of this stirred up 
within my soul a bitter hatred and a burning indignation 
against the laws and the people that tolerate such things ; 
fierce and deadly passions which tore my heart, distracted 
and tormented me, even more than my grief at the sudden 
separation. 

But the more violent emotions ever tend to cure them- 
selves. If the patient survive the first paroxysm, his mind 
speedily begins to verge towards its natural equilibrium. 1 


168 


MEMOIRS OF 


found It so. The torture of furious but impotent emotions 
at first almost overpowered me. But my feelings softened 
by degrees ; till, at length, they subsided into a dull, but 
fixed and settled misery ; a misery which the impulse of 
temporary excitement may sometimes make me forget, but 
which, like the guilty man’s remorse, is too deeply rooted 
to be ever eradicated. 


CHAPTFR XXVI. 

At length we arrived at Charleston, the capital of South 
Carolina. We spent several days in recruiting ourselves 
after our long journey. As soon as we had recovered from 
our lameness and fatigues, we were dressed up in new 
clothes, and fitted out to show off to the best advantage. 
We^ were then exposed for the inspection of purchasers. 
The women and children, pleased with their new finery, 
seemed to enjoy the novelty of their situation, and appeared 
as anxious to find a master and to bring a high price, as 
though the bargain were actually for their own benefit. 
The greater part of our company were bought up by a 
single purchaser, and I among the rest,. We were pur- 
chased by general Carter, a man of princely fortune, indeed 
one of the richest planters in South Carolina ; and were 
immediately sent off to one of his plantations, at some 
distance from the city. 

The lower country of South Carolina, from the Atlantic 
for eighty or a hundred miles inward, including more than 
half the state, is, with the exception I shall presently men- 
tion, one of the most barren, miserable, uninviting countries 
in .the universe. In general, the soil is nothing but a 
thii-sty sand, covered for miles and miles, with forests of 
the long-leaved pine. These tracts are called, in the ex- 
pressive phrase of the country. Pine Barrens. For a 
great distance inland, these Barrens preserve almost a 
perfect level, raised but a few feet above the surface of the 
sea. The tall, straight, branchless trunks of the scattered 


A FUGITIVE. 


169 


pines, rise like slender columns, and are crowned with a 
tuft of knarly limbs and long, bristly leaves, through which 
the breezes murmur with a monotonous sound, much like 
that of falling waters, or waves breaking on a beach. 
There is rarely any undergrowth, and the surface is either 
matted with the saw-palmetto, a low ever-green, or covered 
with a coarse and scattered grass, on which herds of half- 
wild cattle feed in summer, and starve in winter. The 
trunks of the pines scarcely interrupt a prospect, whose 
tedious sameness is only varied by tracts, here and there, 
of almost impenetrable swamp, thickly grown up with bays, 
water oaks, cypresses and other large trees, adown whose 
spreading branches and whitened trunks, a long dusky moss 
hangs in melancholy festoons, drooping to the ground, the 
very drapery of disease and death. The rivers, which are 
wide and shallow, swollen with the heavy rains of spring 
and winter, frequently overflow their low and marshy banks, 
and help to increase the extent of swampy ground, — the 
copious source of poisonous vapors and febrile exhalations. 
Even where the country begins to rise into hills, it pre- 
serves, for a long distance, its sterile character, It is a col- 
lection of sandy hillocks thrown together in the strangest 
confusion. In several places, not even the pine will grow ; 
and the barren and thirsty soil, is clothed only with stunted 
bushes of the black jack, or dwarf oak. In some spots 
even these are wanting ; and the bare sand is drifted by 
the winds. 

Throughout this extent of country, of which, with all its 
barrenness, a great part might be, and by the enterprising 
spirit of free labor doubtless would be, brought into profit- 
able cultivation, there are only some small tracts, principally 
along the water courses, which the costly and thriftless 
system of slave labor has found capable of improvement. 
All the rest still remains a primitive wilderness, with scarcely 
any thing to interrupt its desolate and dreary monotony. 

This description does not include the tract stretching 
along the sea-shore, from the mouth of the Santee to that 
of the Savannah, and extending in some places, twenty or 
thirty miles up the country. The coast between these 
rivers, is a series of islands ; — the famous sea-islands of the 

]r> 


170 


MEMOIRS OF 


cotton markets ; and the main land, which is separated from 
these islands by innumerable narrow and winding channels, 
is penetrated, for some distance inland, by a vast number of 
creeks and inlets. The islands present a bluff shore and a 
fine beach towards the ocean, but the opposite sides are often 
low and marshy. They were originally covered with a 
magnificent growth of the live, or ever-green oak, one of the 
finest trees anywhere to be seen. The soil is light ; but it 
possesses a fertility never yet attained in the dead and bar- 
ren sands of the interior. These lands are protected by 
embankments from the tides and floods, and the fields are 
divided and drained by frequent dikes and ditches. Such 
of them as can be mogt conveniently irrigated with fresh 
water, are cultivated as rice-fields ; — the remainder are em- 
ployed in the production of the long staple, or sea-island 
cotton, — a species of vegetable wool, which excels every 
other in the length of its fibre, and almost rivals silk in 
strength and softness. 

These beautiful districts present a strong contrast to the 
rest of the lower country of South Carolina. As far as the 
eye can stretch, nothing is to be seen but a smooth, level, 
nighly-cultivated country, penetrated in every direction by 
creeks and rivers. The residences of the planters are often 
handsome buildings, placed on some fine swell, and shaded 
by a choice variety of trees and shrubbery. These houses 
are inhabited by their owners only in the winter. They 
are driven from home in the summer, partly by the tire- 
someness of a listless and monotonous indolence, and partly, 
by the unhealthiness of the climate, which is much aggra- 
vated by the rice cultivation. This absentee aristocracy 
congregates in Charleston, or dazzles and astonishes the 
cities and watering places of the North, by its profuse ex- 
travagance and reckless dissipation. The plantations are 
left to the sole management of overseers, who, with their 
families, form almost the only permanent free population of 
these districts. The slaves are ten times as numerous as 
the free. The whole of this rich and beautiful country is 
devoted to the support of a few hundred families in a lordly, 
luxurious, dissipated indolence, which renders them useless 
to the world and a burden to themselves ; and to contribute 


A FUGITIVE. 


171 


towards this same great end, more than a hundred thousand 
human beings are sunk into the very lowest depths of deg- 
radation and misery. 

General Carter, our new master, was one of the richest 
of these American grandees. The plantation to which we 
were sent, was called Loosahachee ; and though very ex- 
tensive, was but one out of several, which he owned. 
Coming as I did from Virginia, there were many things in 
the appearance of the country, and in the way in which 
things were managed, that were entirely new to me. 

I and my companions who had always been accustomed 
to some small quantity of meat as a relish to our corn diet, 
found our mere unseasoned hominy neither so palatable nor 
so nourishing as we could wish. Being strangers and new- 
corriers, we had not yet learned the customs of the country ; 
and were quite unacquainted with many of the arts by which 
the Carolina slaves are enabled to eke out their scanty and 
insufficient allowance. Our only resource was an appeal to 
our master’s generosity ; and it happened, that about a fort- 
night after we were put upon the plantation, general Carter, 
with several of his friends, made a flying visit from Charles- 
ton to Loosahachee, to see how the crops were coming on. 
This we thought to be a good opportunity to get some im- 
provement of our fare. We did not like to ask too much, 
lest our rajuest should be rejected without ceremony. In- 
deed, we determined to be as moderate as possible ; and 
after due consultation, it was resolved to petition our master 
for a little salt to season our hominy, — a luxury to which 
we had always been accustomed, hut which was not 
included in the Loosahachee allowance, which consisted 
simply of com, a peck a week to each working hand. My 
companions requested me to act as spokesman, and I read- 
ily undertook to do so. 

When general Carter and his friends came near my task, 
I walked towards him. He asked me what I meant by 
leaving my work in that fashion, and inquired what I want- 
ed ? I told him that I was one of the servants whom he 
had lately purchased ; that some of us were born and raised 
in Virginia and the rest in North Carolina; that we 
were not used to living upon bare hominy without any 


173 


^lEMOIRS OF 


thing to give it a relish ; and that we should take it as a 
very great favor if he would be kind enough to allow us a 
little salt. 

He seemed to be rather surprised at the boldness of this 
request, and inquired my name. 

“ Archy Moore,” I answered. 

“ Archy Moore!” he cried with a sneer, — “and pray 
tell me how long it has been the fashion among you fellows 
to have double names ? You are the first fellow I ever 
owned, who was guilty of such a piece of impertinence ; — 
and a damned impertinent fellow you are. I see it in your 
eye. Let me beg leave to request of you, Mr Archy Moore, 
to be satisfied with calling yourself Archy, the next time 1 
inquire your name.” 

I had taken the name of Moore, since leaving Spring- 
Meadow ; an assumption not uncommon in Virginia, and 
which is there thought harmless enough. But the South 
Carolinians, who of all the Americans, seem to have carried 
the theory and practice ol tyranny to the highest perfec- 
tion, are jealous of every thing that may seem in any 
respect, to raise their slaves above the level of their dogs 
and horses. 

The words and manner of my master were sufficiently 
irritating, but 1 was not to be shuffled off in that way. I 
passed over his rebuke in silence, but ventured again, in the 
most respectful terms I could command, to renew the re- 
quest, that he would be pleased to allow us a little salt to 
season our hominy. 

“ You are a damned, unreasonable, dissatisfied set oi 
fellows as ever I met with 1 ” was the answer. “ Why 
hoy, you eat me out of house and horne already. It is as 
much as I can do to buy corn for you. If you want salt, 
isn’t there plenty of sea-water within five miles ? If you 
want it, you have nothing to do but to make it 1 ” 

So he said ; and as they wheeled their horses and rode 
away, he and his companions joined in a loud laugh a1 
the wit and point of his answer. 


A FUGITIVE. 


173 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

Among Mr Carleton’s servants, or rather the servants 
that had been ]Mr Carleton’s, but who had now become the 
property of general Carter, was one named Thomas. 
While we had lived together at Carleton-Hall, I had con- 
tracted an intimacy with him, which we still kept up. 
He was of unmixed African blood, with good features, a 
stout muscular frame, and on several accounts, a very re- 
markable man. 

His bodily strength, and his capacity for enduring priva- 
tion and fatigue, were very uncommon ; but the character 
of his mind was still more so. His passions were strong 
and e'ven violent ; but what is very rare among slaves, he 
had them completely under his control ; and in all his words 
and actions he was as gentle as a lamb. The truth was, 
that when quite young, he had been taken in hand by cer- 
tain Methodists, who lived and labored in his neighborhood ; 
and so strong and lasting were the impressions which theii* 
teaching made upon him, and so completely had he imbibed 
their doctrines, that it seemed as if several of the most 
powerful principles of human nature had been eradicated 
from his bosom. 

His reli^ous teachers had thoroughly inculcated into a 
soul, naturally proud and high-spirited, that creed of passive 
obedience and patient long-suffering, which under the sacred 
name of religion, has been often found more potent than 
whips or fetters, in upholding tyranny, and subduing the 
resistance of the superstitious and trembling slave. They 
had taught him, and he believed, that God had made him a 
servant ; and that it was his duty to obey his master, and be 
contented with his lot. Whatever cruelties or indignities 
the unprovoked insolence of unlimited authority might in- 
flict upon him, it was his duty to submit in humble silence ; 
and if his master smote him on one cheek, he was to 
turn to him the other also. This, with Thomas, was not 
a mere form of words run through with, and then forgot- 
ten. In all my experience, 1 have never known a man 


174 


MEMOIRS OF 


over whom his creed appeared to hold so powerful a 
control. 

Nature had intended him for one of those lofty spirits 
who are the terror of tyrants, and the bold assertors of lib- 
erty. But under the influence of his religion, he had 
become a passive, humble and obedient slave. He made 
it a point of duty to be faithful to his master in all things. 
He never tasted whiskey ; he would sooner starve than 
steal ; and he preferred being whipped to telling a lie. 
These qualities, so very uncommon in a slave, as well as 
his cheerful obedience, and laborious industry, had gained 
him the good will even of Mr Carleton’s overseer. He was 
treated as a sort of confidential servant ; was often trusted 
to keep the keys, and give out the allowance ; — and so 
scrupulously did he fulfil all that was required of him, that 
even the fretful caprice of an overseer had no fault to find. 
He had lived at Carleton-Hall more than ten years, and in 
all that time, had never once been whipped. What was 
most remarkable and uncommon of all, at the same time 
that he obtained the confidence of the overseer, Thomas 
had succeeded in gaining the good will of his fellow ser- 
vants. There never lived a kinder-hearted, better tempered 
man. There was nothing he was not ready to do for a 
fellow creature in distress ; he was ever willing to share his 
provisions with the hungry, and to help the weak and tired 
to finish their tasks. Besides, he was the spiritual guide of 
the plantation, and could preach and pray almost as well 
as his master. I had no sympathy for his religious enthu- 
siasm, but I loved and admired the man ; and we had long 
been on terms of close intimacy. 

Thomas had a wife, Ann, by name, a pretty, sprightly, 
good natured girl, whom he loved exceedingly. It was a 
P'eat comfort to him, — ^indeed he regarded it as a special 
interposition of Providence in his behalf, — that when carried 
away from Carleton-Hall they had not been separated. 
Never was a man more grateful, or more delighted than 
Thomas was, when he found that both he and Ann had 
been purchased by general Carter. That they should fall 
mto the hands of the same owner was all he desired ; and 
he readily transferred to the service of his purchaser, all 


A FUGITIVE. 


175 


I hat zeal and devotion, which, as he had been taught to 
believe, a slave owes to his master. While all the rest of 
us, upon our first arrival at Loosahachee, had been com- 
plaining and lamenting over the hardness of our tasks, and 
the poor and insufficient food which our new master allowed 
us, Thomas said not a word ; but had worked away with 
such zeal and vigor, that he soon gained the reputation of 
being one of the best hands on the place. 

Thomas’s wife had an infant child but a few weeks old, 
who, according to the Carolina fashion, was brought to her 
in the field to be nursed ; — for the Carolina planters, spend- 
thrifts in every thing else, in all that regards their servants, 
are wonderful economists. One hot afternoon, Ann sat 
down beneath a tree, and took the infant from the hands of 
the little child herself scarcely able to walk, who had the 
care of it during the day. She had finished the maternal 
office, and was returning slowly, and perhaps rather unwill- 
ingly to her task, when the overseer rode into that part of 
the field. The name of our overseer was Mr Martin. He 
was one. of those who are denominated smart fellows and 
good disciplinarians. He had established a rule that there 
was to be no loitering at Loosahachee. W alking was too 
lazy a pace for him ; if there was any occasion to go from 
one part of the field to another, it was to be in a run. Ann 
had perhaps forgotten, at all events, she was not complying 
with this ridiculous piece of plantation discipline. This 
was no sooner observed by the overseer, than he rode up to 
her ; cursed her for a lazy vagabond ; and commenced 
beating her over the head with his whip. Thomas happened 
to be working close by. He felt every stroke ten times as 
keenly as though it had lighted upon his own shoulders. 
Here was a trial too strong for the artificial principles of 
any creed. He moved forward as though he would go to 
his wife’s assistance. We who were by, begged him to 
stop ; and told him he would only get himself into trouble. 
But the cries and shrieks of his wife made him deaf to our 
entreaties ; he rushed forward ; and before the overseer was 
aware, he seized his whip, snatched it from his hand ; and 
demanded what he meant by beating a woman in that way, 
for no ofFence whatever ? 


176 


MEMOIRS OF 


To judge from Mr Martin’s looks, this was a display of 
spirit, or as he would call it, of insolence and insubordina- 
tion, for which he was not at all prepared. He reined back 
his horse for a rod or two ; — when, seeming to recollect 
himself, he put his hand into his coat-pocket and drew out 
a pistol. He cocked it and pointed it at Thomas, who 
dropped the whip and turned to mn. Mr Martin fired ; 
but his hand shook too much to enable him to take a very 
effectual aim ; and Thomas continued liis- flight ; leaped the 
fence ; and disappeared in the thicket by which it was 
bordered. 

Having put the husband to flight, the overseer turned to 
the wife who stood by trembling and crying. He was boil- 
ing over with rage and passion, and seemed determined to 
spend his fury on this helpless and unhappy woman. He 
called the driver of the gang, and two or three other men to 
his assistance, and bade them strip off her clothes. 

The preparations being complete, Mr Martin commenced 
the torture. The lash buried itself in her flesh at every 
blow ; and as the poor wretch threw up her gashed and gory 
arms, the blood ran down in streams. Her cries were 
dreadful. Used as I had been to similar scenes, my heart 
sickened, and my head grew dizzy. I longed to seize the 
monster by the throat and dash him to the ground. How I 
restrained myself I do not know. Most sure I am, that 
nothing but the base and dastard spirit of a slave could 
have endured that scene of female torture and distress, and 
not have interfered. • 

Before Mr Martin had finished, poor Ann sunk to the 
ground in a state of total insensibility. He ordered us to 
make a litter, of sticks and hoe-handles, and to caiTy her to 
his house. We laid her down in the passage. The over- 
seer brought a heavy chain, one end of which he put 
around her neck, and the other he fastened to one of the 
beams. He said her fainting was all pretence ; and that if 
he did not chain her, she would be running away and join- 
ing her husband. 

We were now all ordered into the woods to hunt for 
Thomas. We separated and pretended to examine every 
place that seemed likely to conceal him ; but with the ex- 


A FUGITIVE. 


177 


ception of the drivers, and one or two base fellows wiio 
sought to ciiriy favor with the overseer, I do not believe 
that any of us felt any great anxiety, or took much pains to 
find him. Not far from the fence was a low swampy place, 
thickly grown up with cane and gum-trees. As 1 was 
making my way through it, I came suddenly upon Thomas, 
who was leaning against the trunk of a large tree. He laid 
his hand upon my shoulder, and asked what the overseer 
had done to his wife. I concealed from him, as well as I 
could, the miserable torture which had been inflicted upon 
her ; but I told him that Mr Martin was all fire and fury, 
and that it would be best for him to keep out of the way 
till his passion could subside a little. I promised to return 
in the evening and to bring him food. In the mean time, 
if he would lie close, there would be little danger that any 
one would find him. 

We were presently called back from our ineffectual 
search, and ordered to resume our tasks. I finished mine 
as quickly as I could ; hastened home, got some food 
^ ready, and went to see poor Ann. I found her lying in the 
passage chained as we had left her. Her low moans showed 
that she had so far recovered herself as to be once more 
sensitive to pain. She complained that the chain about her 
neck hurt her and made it difficult to breathe. I stooped 
down and was attempting to loosen it, when Mrs Martin 
made her appearance at the door ; she asked what right I 
had to meddle with the girl ; and bade me go about my 
business. I would have left the food I had brought ; but 
Mrs Martin told me to take it away again ; it would learn 
the wench better manners, she said, to starve her for a day 
or two. 

I took up my little basket, and went away with a heavy 
heart. As soon as it grew dark, I set off to meet Thomas ; 
but lest my steps might be dogged by the overseer or some of 
his spies, I took a very round-about course. I found him 
near the place where I had met him before. His earnest 
entreaties to know the whole, drew from me the story of his 
poor wife’s sufferings and her present situation. It moved 
him deeply. At intervals he wept like a child ; — then he 
strove to restrain himself, repeating half aloud, some texts 


178 


MEMOIRS OF 


of scripture, and what seemed a sort of prayer. But all 
would not do ; and carried away at last, by a sudden gust 
' of passion, forgetful of his religious scruples, he cursed 
the brutal overseer with all the energy of a husband’s 
vengeance. Presently he recovered his self-command, and 
began to take fault to himself, ascribing all the blame to his 
own foolish interference. The thought that what his affec- 
tion for his wife had prompted him to do, had only served 
to aggravate her sufferings, seemed to agitate him almost to 
distraction. Again, the tide of passion swept all before it. 
His countenance grew convulsed ; his bosom heaved*; and 
he only found relief in half-uttered threats and muttered 
execrations. 

He consulted with me as to what he had better do. 1 
knew that the overseer was terribly incensed against him. 
I had heard him say, that if such a daring act of insolence 
was not most signally punished, it would be enough to 
corrupt and disorder the whole neighborhood. I was aware 
that Mr Martin would not dare absolutely to put him to 
death. But this prohibition to commit murder is the sole and 
single limit to an overseer’s authority ; and I knew that he 
had both the right and the will to inflict a torture compared 
to which the agonies of an ordinary death-struggle would 
be but trifling. I therefore advised Thomas to fly ; since 
even if he were caught at last, no severer punishment could 
be inflicted upon him than he would be certain of, upon a 
voluntary surrender. 

For a moment, this advice seemed to please him ; and 
an expression of daring determination appeared in his face, 
such as I had never seen there before. But it disappeared 
in an instant. “ There is Ann,” he said, I cannot leave 
her, and she, poor timid thing, even if she were well, I 
could never persuade her to fly with me. It will not do, 
Archy ; I cannot leave my wife ! ” 

What could I answer ? 

I understood him well, and knew how to sympathize 
with him. I could not but admit the force of his objection. 
Such feelings I knew it would be in vain to combat with 
arguments ; indeed I could not make up my mind to 
attempt it ; and as I had no other advice to give, I remained 
silent. 


A FUGITIVE. 


179 


Thomas seemed lost in thought, and continued for some 
minutes with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Presently 
he told me that he had made up his mind. He was de- 
termined, he said, to go to Charleston and appeal to his 
master. 

The little I had known of general Carter, did not incSne 
me to put much dependence on his justice or generosity ; 
but as Thomas seemed pleased with this plan, and as it was 
his only chance, I applauded it. He ate the food I had 
brought, and determined to set off immediately. 'He had 
only been once to Charleston, during all the time we had 
been at Loosahachee ; but as he was one of those people, 
who, if they have been once to a place, find little difficulty 
in going a second time, I had no doubt of his finding his 
way to town. 

I returned to my cabin ; but I was so anxious and un- 
certain about the success of Thomas, in the scheme he had 
adopted, that I could not sleep. At daylight I went to my 
task. My anxiety acted as a stimulus upon me, and I had 
finished long before any of my companions. As I was 
passing from the field to my cabin, I saw general Carter’s 
carriage driving up the road ; and as it passed me I ob- 
served poor Thomas behind, chained to the footman’s 
standi 

The carriage drove up to the house. General Carter got 
out of it, and sent off in great haste for Mr Martin, who 
had taken his gun and dog early that morning, and had 
been beating about the woods all day, in search of Thomas. 
In the mean time, general Carter ordered all the hands on 
the plantation to be collected. 

At last Mr Martin arrived. The moment general 
Carter saw him, he cried out — “ Well, sir, here is a runaway, 
I have brought back for you. Would you believe it ? — the 
fellow had the impertinence to come to Charleston with the 
story of his grievances 1 Even from his own account of the 
matter, he was guilty of the greatest insolence I ever heard 
of. Snatching the whip from the hand of an overseer ! 
Things are coming to a pretty pass indeed, when these 
fellows undertake to justify such insubordination. The next 
thing we shall hear of, they will be cutting our throats. 


180 


MEMOIRS OF 


Howover, I stopped the scoundrel’s mouth before he had 
said five words. I told him, I would pardon any thing 
sooner than insolence to my overseer. I would much sooner 
excuse impertinence towards myself. And to let him know 
what I thought of his conduct, here you see I have brought 
him back to you ; and 1 have done it, even at the risk of 
being obliged to sleep here to-night, and catching the coun- 
try fever. Whip the rascal well, Mr Martin ! whip him 
well ! I have had all the hands collected, that they may 
see the punishment, and take warning by it.” 

Mr Martin thus invited, sprung upon his prey with a 
tiger’s ferocity. But I have no inclination to disgust my- 
self with another description of the horrid torment of which 
in America, the whip is the active and continual instrument. 
He who is curious in these matters, will do well to spend 
six months upon an American plantation. He will soon 
discover that the rack was a superfluous invention ; and that 
the whip, by those well skilled in the use of it, can be made 
to answer any purposes of torture. 

Though Thomas was quite cut up with the lash, and 
whipped by two drivers till he fainted from pain and loss 
of blood, such was the nerve and vigor of his constitution, 
and the noble firmness of his mind, that he stood it like a 
hero, and disdained to utter any of those piercing screams 
and piteous cries for mercy, which are commonly heard up- 
on the like occasions. He soon got over the effects of 
\his discipline ; and in a few days was at work again as 
usual. ^ 

Not so with his wife. She was naturally of a slender 
constitution, and perhaps had not entirely recovered from 
the weakness incident upon child-birth. Either the whip- 
ping she had suffered, or her chains and starvation after- 
wards, or both together, had brought on a violent disorder, 
of which at first, she seemed to get better, but which left 
her suffering under a dull nervous fever, without strength or 
appetite, or even the desire of recovery. Her poor baby 
seemed to synipathize with its mother, and pined from day 
to day. At length it died. The mother did not long sur- 
vive it. She lingered for a week or two. Sick as she was, 
she had no attendant except a superannuated old woman 


A FUGITIVE. 


181 


who could neither see nor hear. Thomas of course was 
obliged to go to his tasks as usual. He returned one night, 
and found her dead. 

One of the drivers, a mean spirited fellow, and Mr Mar- 
tin’s principal spy and informer, was the only person al- 
lowed to preach at Loosahachee, and to act as the leader 
in those mummeries to which the ignorant and superstitious 
slaves give the name of religion. He paid a visit to the 
afflicted husband, and offered his services for the funeral. 
Thomas had so much natural good sense, that he was not, 
like many persons of his way 'of thinking, imposed upon and 
taken in, by every one who chose to make use of the cant 
of sanctity. He had long ago seen through this hypocritical 
fellow, and learned to despise him. He therefore declined 
his assistance ; and pointing to me, Himself and his friend,” 
he said, “ would be sufficient to bury the poor girl.” He 
seemed about to add something more ; but the mention of 
his wife had overpowered him ; his voice choked, his eyes 
filled with tears, and he was constrained to be silent. 

It was a Sunday. The preacher soon left us ; and poor 
Thomas sat the whole day watching his wife’s body. I re- 
mained with him ; but I knew how useless any attempt at 
consolation would be, and I said but little. 

Towards sun-set, several of our fellow servants came in ; 
and they were presently followed by most of the plantation 
people. We took up the body and carried it to the place 
of burial. This was a fine smooth slope covered with tall 
trees. It seemed to have been long used for its present 
purpose. Numerous little ridges, some of them new, and 
others just discernible, indicated the places of the graves. 

The husband leaned over the body, while we busied 
ourselves in the sad office of digging its last resting place. 
The shallow grave was soon finished. We all remained 
silent, in expectation of a prayer, a hymn, or some similar 
ceremony. Thomas attempted once or twice to begin ; but 
his voice rattled in his throat, and died away in an inarticu- 
late murmur. He shook his head, and bade us place the 
body in the grave. We did so; and the earth was soon 
heaped upon it. 

It was already growing dark ; and the burial being fin- 
16 


182 


MEMOIRS OF 


islied, those who had attended at it, hastened homeward. 
The husband still remained standing by the side of the 
grave. I took his arm, and with a gentle force, would have 
drawn him away. He shook me oft', and raising his hand 
and head, he muttered in a low whisper, “ Murdered, mur- 
dered ! ” As he spoke these words, he turned his eyes on 
me. There gleamed in them, a spirit of passionate and in- 
dignant grief. It was plain that natural feeling was fast 
gaining the mastery over that system of artificial constraint 
in which he had been educated. I sympathized with him ; 
and I pressed his hand to let 'him know I did so. He re- 
turned the pressure ; and after a short pause, he added. 
Blood for blood ; is it not so, Archy ? ” There was some- 
thing terrible in the slow, but firm and steady tone in which 
he spoke. I knew not what to answer; nor did he appear 
to expect a reply. Though he addressed me, the question 
seemed intended only for himself. I took his arm, and we 
walked oft* in silence. 


CHAPTER XXVIH. 

It is customary in South Carolina, to allow the slaves 
the week from Christmas to the new year, as a sort of holi- 
day. This indulgence is extended so far, that during that 
week, they are, for the most part, allowed to leave the plan- 
tations, the scenes of their daily labors and suft'erings, and 
to wander about in the neighborhood, pretty much at their 
own will and pleasure. The high-ways present at that 
season, a singular appearance. The slaves of every age 
and sex, collected from the populous plantations of the tide- 
waters, and dressed in the best attire they have been able 
to muster, assemble in great numbers, swarming along the 
road, and clustering about the little whiskey-shops, produ- 
cing a scene of bustle and confusion, witnessed only at the 
Christmas holidays. 

Those shops are principally supported by a traffic with 
the slaves for stolen rice and cotton, — a traffic which all the 


A FUGITIVE. 


183 


vindictive fury of the planters, backed by an abundant legis- 
lation, has not been able to eradicate. They are tlie chief 
^support, in fact, the only means of livelihood, open to a con- 
siderable portion of the lower order of the white aristocracy 
of the country. It is the same in Carolina as in Lower Vir- 
ginia. The poor whites are extremely rude and ignorant, 
and acquainted with but few of the comforts of civilized 
life. They are idle, dissipated, and vicious ; with all that 
vulgar brutality of vice, which poverty and ignorance ren- 
der so conspicuous and disgusting. Without land, or at 
best, possessing some little tract of bsK’ren and exhausted 
soil, which they have neither skill nor industry to render 
productive ; without any trade or handicraft art ; and look- 
ing upon all manual labor as degrading to freemen, and fit 
only for a state of servitude, — ^these poor white men have 
become the jest of the slaves, and are at once, feared and 
hated by the select aristocracy of rich planters. It is only 
the right of suffrage which they possess, that preserves them 
the show of consideration and respect with which they are 
yet treated. This right of suffrage, of which the select 
aristocracy are extremely anxious to deprive them, is the 
only safeguard of the poor whites. ' But for this, they would 
be trampled under foot without mercy ; and by force of law 
and legislation, would soon be reduced to a condition little 
superior to that of the very slaves themselves. 

On the Christmas holidays which succeeded my becoming 
an inhabitant of Loosahachee, a great number of slaves, of 
whom, I«was one, were assembled about a little store on 
the neighboring high road, laughing, talking, drinking whis- 
key, and making merry after our several fashions. While 
we were thus employed, I observed riding along the road, 
a mean looking fellow, shabbily dressed, wdth a face of that 
disagreeable cadaverous hue that makes the inferior order 
of whites in Lower Carolina look so much like walking, 
corpses. He was mounted on a lean scraggy horse, whose 
hips seemed just bursting through the skin’, and he carried 
in his hand an enormous whip, w'hich he handled with a 
familiar grace, seldom acquired except by an American 
slave-driver. As he passed us, I noticed that all the slaves 
who had hats, pulled them off to him ; but as I did not see 


184 


MEMOmS OF 


any thing in the fellow’s appearance that demanded any 
particular respect, and as I was ignorant of the Carolina 
etiquette, which requires from every slave an obsequious 
bearing towards every freeman, seldom expected in Vir- 
ginia, I let my hat remain upon my head. The fellow 
noticed it ; reined up his jaded beast, and eyed me sharply. 
My complexion made him doubt whether I might not be 
a freeman ; my dress and the company I was in, gave him 
equal grounds for supposing me a slave. He inquired who 
I was ; and being told that 1 was one of general Carter’s 
people, he rode tovj^rds me with his upraised whip, de- 
manding why I did not take off my hat to him ; and without 
waiting for an answer, he began to lay the lash over my 
shoulders. The fellow was evidently drunk, and my first 
impulse was to take the whip away from him. Luckily I 
did not yield to this impulse ; for any attempt to resist even 
a drunken white man, though that resistance was only in 
repelling the most unprovoked attack, according to the just 
and equal laws of Carolina, might have cost me my life. 

I learned upon inquiry that this fellow had been an over- 
seer ; but some time previous had been discharged by his 
employer for suspected dishonesty. Not long after, he had 
set up a whiskey shop about half a mile distant. From 
what he said to the owner of the store where we were as- 
sembled, it would seem that his shop had not been so much 
frequented during the holidays as he had expected ; and in 
beating me, he had vented his drunken spite and ill humor 
on the first object that gave him any thing like a pretence 
to exercise it. I learned too, that this fellow whose name 
was Christie, was a cousin of Mr Martin, our overseer. 
They had been close friends ; but had lately had a violent 
quarrel. Christie had stabbed Martin ; and IMartin had 
shot at Christie with his double-barrelled gun. He had 
Jtaken a still more effectual revenge by doing his best to 
stop the trade from Loosahachee to Christie’s shop, which 
he had formerly winked at, and which had been carried on. 
much to Christie’s benefit, by the exchange of well watered 
whiskey for general Carter’s rice and cotton. 

I no sooner heard this account of Mr Chiistie, than it oc- 
curred to me that I had him in my power ; and at once, 1 


A FUGITIVE. 


185 


resolved to make him smart in his turn, for the lashes he 
had inflicted upon me. It is true, I was obliged to play the 
part of a spy and an informer ; but such low means are the 
only resource which the condition of servitude allows. As 
soon as I got home, I hastened to the overseer, and with an 
abundance of hypocritical pretences and professions of zeal 
for my master’s service, I communicated to him as a great 
secret, the fact that Mr Christie was in the habit of trading 
with the hands, and buying whatever they brought him, 
without asking any questions. ' 

Mr Martin said that he was well aware of it ; and he 
would give me five dollars, if I would help him to detect 
Christie in the fact. 

We quickly struck up a bargain. The overseer furnished 
me with a quantity of cotton ; and I set off, one moon-liglit 
night, to pay a visit to Mr Christie’s shop. 

He recognized me at once, and jested a good deal, about 
the whipping he had given me. He thought it an excel- 
lent joke ; and it best answered my purpose to appear very 
much of the same opinion. I found him not at all disin- 
clined to trade, provided I would exchange my cotton for 
his whiskey, at the nominal price of a dollar a quart. It 
was not long before I paid him a second visit. That time, 
Mr Martin and one of his friends were posted outside the 
shop, at a place where they could peep between the logs 
and see and overhear the whole transaction. 

To buy rice, cotton, or in fact any thing else of a slave, 
unless he produces a written permit from his master to sell 
it, according to the Carolina statute-book, is one of the most 
enormous crimes a. man can commit. Mr Christie was in- 
dicted at the next court. He was found guilty on the 
express testimony of Mr Martin and his companion ; and 
was fined a thousand dollars, and sentenced to a year’s im- 
prisonment. The fine swept away what little property he 
had ; and how his imprisonment ended I never heard. 
More than one of the jurymen who convicted him, were 
grievously suspected of the very same practices ; but the 
dread of incurring fresh suspicion, or perhaps the jealous 
rivalry of trade, made those very fellows the most clamorous 
for his condemnation. 

16 * 


186 


MEMOIRS OF 


Mr Martin was so well pleased with my services in this 
affair, — ;in which he fancied I had put myself forward mere- 
ly to be used as his cat’s paw, — that he took mg quite into 
favor, and began to employ me as one of his regular spies 
and informers. Tyranny, whether on the great scale or the 
little, can only be sustained through a system of espionage 
and betrayal, in which the most mean-spirited of the op- 
pressed are turned into the tools and instruments of oppres- 
sion. There are many alleviations of the wretchedness of 
servitude to be expected from the favor and indulgence of 
an overseer. Let it be remembered also, that so strong are 
the allurements which power holds out, that even among 
freemen, there are hundreds of thousands always to be found, 
who are ready to assist in sacrificing the dearest rights of 
their neighbors, by volunteering to be the instruments of 
superior tyrants. What then can be reasonably expected 
from those who have been studiously and systematically 
degraded ? What wonder, if among the oppressed, are 
found the readiest and most relentless instruments of op- 
pression ? 

As I knew I could turn Mr Martin’s favor to good ac- 
count, I took care not to let him suspect, with what scorn 
and loathing I regarded the office in which he sought to 
employ me. But while he imagined that I was engaged 
heart and hand in his service, I counter-worked him more 
than once, by communicating his plans and stratagems to 
those whom he sought to entrap. This same Mr Martin, 
though he was absolute viceroy over more than three hun- 
dred people, was a very ignorant and a very stupid fellow. 
Several circumstances occurred, which with a shrewd per- 
son would have betrayed me ; but I succeeded so complete- 
ly in blinding Mr Martin’s eyes, that he still continued to 
place an unlimited confidence in my fidelity. Of this, he 
soon gave me a new proof ; for riding one day, into the 
field, where I was at work, and not finding matters going 
on just to suit him, he called out the driver of the gang, and 
took from him the whip, which he carried as the badge and 
principal instrument of his office. He then called for me ; 
and having given me twenty or thirty lashes, according to 
the custom in such cases, he put the whip into my hand ; 


A FUGITIVE. 


187 


appointed me driver of the gang, and bade me do the first 
duty of my new ofiice upon the fellow to whose place I had 
succeeded. 

It is under the inspection of drivers, who are appoint- 
ed from among the slaves, at the will of the overseer, that 
the culture of a Carolina plantation is carried on. The 
overseei's have learned too much of the airs and the luxu- 
rious indolence of their employers, to be willing to be 
riding about all day, in the hot sun, looking after the la- 
borers. The slaves are divided into gangs, and each gang 
is put under the charge of a driver, who is generally select- 
ed for his cowardly and mean-spirited subserviency, and his 
readiness to tyrannize over and to betray his companions. 
The driver is entrusted with all the unlimited and absolute 
authority of the master himself. He receives a double al- 
lowance ; he has no task ; — ^his sole business is to look after 
his gang and see that they perform the work assigned them ; 
and for this purpose he takes his station in the midst of 
them, whip in hand. When the overseer makes his ap- 
pearance in the field, all the drivers collect about him to 
receive his orders. For the performance of the work as- 
signed to his gang, each driver is himself responsible ; and 
that he may perfectly understand by what means he is to 
enforce its performance, the overseer usually inducts him 
into office by giving him a severe castigation with the very 
whip which he afterwards puts into his hand to be used 
upon his companions. 

The absolute power of an overseer, is often, I ought 
rather to say, always shockingly abused ; but the absolute 
power of drivers is yet one step higher towards the perfec- 
tion of tyranny. The driver faithfully copies all the arro- 
gance and insolence of the overseer from whom h5 receives 
his commission ; and as he is always among his gang, the 
aggravating weight of his authority is so much the heavier. 
He is but one of themselves ; and the slaves are naturally 
more impatient of his rule, than they would be of the same 
dominion, exercised by one belonging to what they have 
been taught to regard as a superior race ; and whom, 
being a freeman, they are ready to acknowledge as actually 
their superior. Besides, the drivers are far from limiting 


188 


ME3I0IRS OF 


their demands, as the overseer himself generally would do, 
to the performance of the field labor. They have a thou- 
sand little spites to gratify ; a thousand purposes of their 
own to accomplish. They are in fact, the absolute masters 
of every thing which any of their gang may happen to 
possess ; and the persons of the women are as much at their 
disposal as at that of the overseer, or the master. Even, if 
by chance, a driver should happen not to be disposed to 
abuse his authority, the dread of losing his situation, and 
the knowledge that all the deficiencies of any of his subor- 
dinates will be visited upon his head, makes him of neces- 
sity, hasty, harsh, and cruel. 

Heaven is my witness that while I held the office of 
driver, my great object was, to use the authority which it 
gave me, to alleviate as far as I could, the misery of my 
companions. My gang consisted of the Carleton hands, 
with whom I had long been connected, and whom I looked 
upon as friends and fellow sufferers. Many is the time, 
when I have seen one and another fainting under his task, 
and unable to finish it, that I have dropped the whip, 
seized the hoe, and instead of the stimulus of the lash, have 
used the encouragement of aid and assistance. This I did 
repeatedly ; though Mr Martin, more than once, when he 
found me so employed, expressed his disapprobation, and 
told me it was no way, and would only bring the station of 
driver into contempt. 

But it is no part of my purpose to write an eulogium on 
myself ; and I shall not hesitate to confess the whole tmth. 
There were times that I abused my office ; — and I verily 
believe that no man ever exercised an unlimited authority 
who did not abuse it. The consciousness of my power, 
made me insolent and impatient ; — and with all my hatred, 
my hearty, experimental hatred of tyranny, the whip had 
not long been placed in my hands, 'before I caught myself 
in the act of playing the tyrant. 

Power is ever dangerous and intoxicating. Human 
nature cannot bear it. It must be constantly checked, 
controlled and limited, or it declines inevitably into tyran- 
ny. Even all the endearments of the family connection ; 
the tenderness of connubial love, and the heart-binding ties 


A FUGITIVE. 


189 


of paternity, seconded as they always are by the strong 
influence of habit and opinion, have not made it safe to 
entrust the head of a family with absolute power even over 
his own household. What terms then are strong enough in 
which to denounce the vain, ridiculous, and wanton folly 
of expecting any thing but abuse where power is totally 
unchecked, by either moral, or legal control ? 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

Since the death of his wife, a remarkable change had 
taken place in my friend Thomas. He had lost his former 
air of contentment and good nature, and had grown morose 
and sullen. Instead of being the most willing and industri- 
ous laborer in the field, as he used to be, he seemed to have 
imbibed a strong distaste for work, and he slighted and 
neglected his task as much as possible. Had he been 
under any other driver than myself, his idleness and neglect 
would have frequently brought him into trouble. But I 
loved and pitied him ; and I screened him all I could. 

The wrongs and injuries that had been inflicted upon 
him since his arrival at Loosahachee, seemed to have sub- 
verted all the principles upon which he had so long acted. 
It was a subject on which he did not seem inclined to con- 
vei’se, and upon which I was unwilling to press him ; but I 
had abundant reason to suspect that he had totally re- 
nounced the religion in which he had been so carefully 
instrifcted ; and which, for so long a time, had exercised so 
powerful an influence over him. He had secretly returned 
to the practice of certain wild rites, which in his early 
youth, he had learned from his mother, who had herself 
been kidnapped from the coast of Africa, and who had 
been, as he had often told me, zealously devoted to her 
country’s superstitions. He would sometimes talk wildly 
and incoherently about having seen the spirit of his depart- 
ed wife, and of some promise he had made to the apparition ; 
and I was led to believe that he suffered under occasional 
fits of partial insanity. 


190 


MEMOIRS OF 


At all events, he was in most respects, an altered man. 
He had ceased to be the humble and obedient slave, con- 
tented with his lot, and zealously devoted to his master’s 
service. Instead of promoting his master’s interest, it 
seemed now to be his study and his aim to do as much 
mischief as possible. There were two or three artful, 
daring, unquiet spirits on the plantation, from whom, till 
lately, he had kept aloof, but whose acquaintance he now 
sought, and whose confidence he soon obtained. They 
found him bold and prudent, and what was more, trusty 
and magnanimous ; and they soon gave place to his superi- 
ority of intellect, and acknowledged him as their leader. 
They were joined by some others, whose only motive was 
the desire of plunder, and they extended their depredations 
to eveiy part of the plantation. 

In this new character, Thomas still gave evidence that 
he was no ordinary man. He conducted his enterprises 
with singular address ; and when all other stratagems by 
which to save his companions from detection proved un- 
availing, he had still one resource that showed the native 
nobleness of his soul. Such was the steady firmness of his 
mind, and the masculine vigor of his constitution, that he 
was enabled to do what few men could. He could brave 
even the torture of the lash — a torture, as I have said 
already, not less terrible than that of the rack itself. When 
every other resource failed him, he was ready to shield his 
companions by a voluntary confession ; and to concentrate 
upon himself a punishment, which he knew that some among 
them were too feeble and faint-hearted to endure. Mag- 
nanimity such as this, is esteemed even in a freeman the 
highest pitch of virtue ; — ^liow then shall we sufficifently 
admire it in a slave ? 

Thank God, tyranny is not omnipotent ! 

Though it crush its victims to the earth ; and tread them 
into the dust ; and brutify them by every possible inven- 
tion ; it cannot totally extinguish the spirit of manhood 
within them. Here it glimmers ; and there it secretly 
burns ; sooner or later, to burst forth in a flame, that will 
not be quenched, and cannot be kept under ! 

So tong as I was in the confidence of Mr Martin, I was 


A FUGITIVE. 


191 


able lo render Thomas essential service, by informing him 
of the suspicions, plans, and stratagems of the overseer. It 
was not long however, before I forfeited that confidence ; 
not because Mr Martin entertained any suspicions of my 
playing him false, — for it was very easy to throw dust into 
the eyes of so stupid a fellow, — ^but because I did not come 
up to his notions of the spirit and the duty of a driver. 
The season was sickly ; and as the hands who composed 
my gang were from a more northern climate, and not yet 
seasoned to the pestiferous atmosphere of a rice plantation, 
they suffered a good deal from sickness, and several of them 
were often unable to work. I had explained this to Mr 
Martin, and he seemed to-be satisfied with my explanation; 
but riding into the field one day, in a particularly bad hu- 
mor, and I believe, a little excited with liquor, he got into 
a towering rage at finding not half my gang in the field, and 
more than half the tasks untouched. 

He demanded the reason. 

I told him that the hands were sick. 

He swore they had no business to be sick ; he was tired, 
he said, of this talk about sickness ; he knew very well it 
was all sham; and he was determined to be imposed upon 
no longer. ‘‘ If any more complaints are made of sickness, 
Archy, you have nothing to do but whip the scoundrels 
and set them to work.” 

What,” said I, “if they are really sick?” 

“ Sick or not sick, I tell you. If they are not sick a 
whipping is no more than they deserve ; and if they are, 
why nothing is so likely to do them good as a little blood- 
letting.” 

“ In that case,” said I, “ you had better appoint another 
driver ; I should make but a poor hand at whipping sick 
people.” 

“Hold your tongue, you damned insolent blackguard. 
Who gave you leave to advise me, or dispute my orders ? 
Hand me your whip, you rascal.” 

I did so ; and Mr Martin thereupon administered upon' 
me a fresh infliction of that same discipline he had bestowed 
when he first put the whip into my hand. So ended my 
drivership ; and though I now lost my double allowance, 


192 


MEMOIRS OF 


and was obliged to turn into the field again, and perform 
my task like the other hands, I cannot say that I much 
regretted it. It was a pitiful and sorry office, which no 
one but a scoundrel ever ought to undertake. 

I how united myself more closely to the party of Thom- 
as, and joined heart and hand in all their enterprises. Our 
depredations became at last so considerable, that Mr Martin 
was obliged to establish a regular watch, consisting of his 
drivers and a few of their subordinates, who kept prowling 
about the plantation all night, and made it unsafe to venture 
into the fields. This arrangement was hastened by a cir- 
cumstance that happened upon the plantation, about which 
a very strict inquiry was instituted, but which led to no 
definite result. On one and the same night, general Car- 
ter’s splendid plantation-seat, and his expensive rice mills 
were discovered to be on fire ; and notwithstanding all 
efforts to save them, both were totally consumed. Several 
of the slaves, and Thomas among the rest, were put to a 
sort of torture to make them acknowledge some participa-' 
tion in this house-burning. That cruelty availed nothing. 
They all stoutly denied knowing any thing about it. I 
was, as I have said, very much in Thomas’s confidence; 
yet he never spoke to me about that fire. As he was one 
of those men who know how to keep their own secrets, I 
always suspected that he knew much more about the matter 
than he chose to divulge. 

At all events, it was evidently a much more potent feel- 
ing, than the mere love of plunder by which Thomas was 
actuated. Since his wife’s death, he sometimes drank to 
excess ; but this was seldom, and there never was a man 
more temperate in his meats and drinks, or less fastidious 
than Thomas generally was. He had formerly dressed 
with much neatness; now he neglected his dress altogether. 
He did not love society ; he had little intercourse with 
any body except with me ; and it was not always that he 
seemed to wish even for my company. Thomas had little 
use for his share of the plunder ; and in fact, he generally 
distributed it among his companions. 

When the thing was first proposed, he seemed to have 
little inclination to extend our depredations beyond the 


A FUGITIVE. 


193 


limits of Loosaliachee. But as it was no longer safe to 
continue them there ; and as his companions had rioted 
too long in plunder to be willing to relinquish it, Thomas 
yielded at last to their urgent solicitations, and led us, 
night after night, to the neighboring plantations. We soon 
pushed our proceedings so far, as to attract the notice of 
the overseers, whose domains we had invaded. At first, 
they supposed that the thieves were to be looked for at 
home ; and numberless were the severities they exercised 
upon those whom they suspected. But in spite of all their 
cruelties, the depredations were still continued ; and such 
was the singular art and cunning which Thomas displayed, 
in varying the scene and manner of our visits, that for a 
long time, we escaped all the traps and ambushes that were 
planned against us. 

We were one night, in a rice field, and had almost filled 
our bags, when the watchful ear of Thomas detected a 
sound, as if of some one cautiously approaching. He sup- 
posed it might be ijie patrol, which* of late, instead of 
whiling away their time by the help of a fiddle and a bottle 
of whiskey, had grown more active, and actually performed 
some of the duties of a night watch. Under this impres- 
sion, he gave a signal for us to steal off quietly, in a certain 
order which he had arranged before hand. The field was 
bordered on one side, by a deep and wide river, from which 
it was protected by a high embankment. We had come 
by water ; and our canoe lay in the river, under the shade 
of a clump of bushes and small trees which grew upon the 
dike. One by one, we cautiously stole over the bank, 
carefully keeping in the shade of the bushes, and all but 
Thomas were already in the boat. We were waiting for 
our leader, who, as usual, was the last man in the retreat, 
when we heard several shouts and cries, which seemed to 
indicate that he was discovered, if not taken. The sound 
of two musket shots fired in rapid succession, increased our 
terror. We hastily shoved the boat from the shore ; and 
pushing her into the current of the flood-tide, which was 
setting up the river, we were carried rapidly and silently 
out of sight of our landing place. The shouts were still 
continued ; but they grew fainter and fainter, and seemed 
17 


194 


MEMOIRS OF 


to take a direction from the river. We now put out our 
paddles, and plying with all our strength, we pretty soon 
reached a small cove or creek, the place where we kept our 
boat, and at which we were accustomed to embark. We 
drew the canoe on shore, and carefully concealed it among 
the high grass. Then, without taking out our rice-bags, 
and leaving our shoes in the boat, we ran towards Loosa- 
hachee, which we reached without any further adventure. 

I was very anxious about Thomas ; but I had scarcely 
thrown myself upon my bed, before I heard a light tap at 
the door of my cabin, which I knew to be his. I sprang 
up and let him in. He was panting for breath and covered 
with mud. Thomas said, that just as he was going to 
climb the embankment, he looked behind him, and saw two 
men rapidly approaching. They seemed to observe him 
just at the same moment, and called to him to stop. If he 
had attempted to reach the boat, it would have drawn them 
that way, and perhaps led to the detection of the whole 
company. The moment they called to him, he dropped 
his rice-bag, and stooping as low as he could, he j^Hished 
rapidly through the rice in a direction from the river. His 
pursuers raised a loud shout, and fired their muskets at him, 
— ^but without effect. He jumped several cross ditches, 
made for the high ground, at a distance from the river, and 
drew off the patrol in that direction. They pursued him 
closely ; but as he was very strong and active, and well 
acquainted with the place, he succeeded in escaping from 
among the ditches and embankments of the rice-field, gained 
the high grounds, and took a direction towards Loosahachee. 
But though he had distanced his pursuers, they had still 
kept upon his track ; and he expected that they would fol- 
low him up, and would shortly be arriving. 

While Thomas was telling his adventures, he had stripped 
off his wet clothes, and washed off the mud with which he 
was covered. 1 furnished him with a dry suit, which he 
took with him to his own cabin which was close by mine, 
I hastened round to the cabins of our companions and told 
them what visitors to expect. The barking of all the plan- 
tation dogs pretty soon informed us that the patrol was 
coming. They had roused up the overseer, and with 


A FUGITIVE. 


195 


torches in their hands, they entered and searched every 
cabin in the quarter. But we were prepared for their visit ; 
we were roused with difficulty out of a deep sleep; and 
seemed to be very much astonished at this unseasonable 
disturbance. 

The search proved to be a very useless one ; but as the 
patrol were certain that they had traced the' fugitive to 
Loosahacbee, the overseer of the plantation upon which 
we had been depredating, came over the next morning to 
search out and punish the culprit. He was accompanied 
by several other men, who it seems were freeholders of 
the district, selected with such forms, or rather such neglect 
of all form, as the laws of Carolina prescribe in such cases. 
Five Carolina freeholders, selected at hap-hazard, constitute 
such a court as in most other countries, would hardly be 
trusted with the final adjudication of any matter above the 
value of forty shillings at the utmost. But in that part ot 
the world, they not only have the power of judging all 
charges against slaves, and sentencing the accused to death ; 
but what the Carolinians doubtless consider a much graver 
matter — the right of saddling the state treasury with the 
estimated value of the culprit. This law for refunding to 
the masters, nominally a part, but what by over-valuation, 
usually amounts to the entire value, of condemned slaves, 
deprives the poor wretches of that protection against an 
unjust sentence, which otherwise they might find in the 
pecuniary interest of their masters ; and leaves them with- 
out any sort of shield against the prejudice, carelessness, or 
stupidity of their judges. But why should we expect any 
thing like equity or fairness in the execution of laws which 
themselves are founded upon the grossest wrong ? It must 
oe confessed, that in this matter the Americans preserve 
throughout, an admirable consistency. 

A table was set out before the door of the overseer’s 
house ; some glasses and a bottle of whiskey were placed 
upon it ; and the court proceeded to business. We were 
all brought up and examined, one after the other. The 
only witnesses were the patrol who had pursued Thomas ; 
and they were ordered by the court to pick out the culpnts. 
That was rather a difficult matter. There were between 


196 


MEMOIRS OF 


sixty and seventy men of us ; the night had been cloudy 
and without a moon ; and the patrol had only caught some 
hasty and uncertain glimpses of the person whom they had 
followed. The court seemed rather vexed at their hesita- 
tion. Yet perhaps it was not very unreasonable; since 
they were quite unable to agree together as to what sort of a 
man it was. One thought him short ; the other was certain 
that he was quite tall. The first, pronounced him a stout, 
well-set fellow; the other had taken him to be very 
slender. 

By this time, the first bottle of whiskey was emptied, 
and a second was put upon the table. The court now told 
the witnesses that it would not do ; they did not come up 
to the mark at all ; and if they went on at that rate, the 
fellow would escape altogether. Just at this moment, the 
overseer of the plantation which had been plundered, rode 
up ; and as soon as he had dismounted, he stepped forward 
to the relief of the witnesses. He said, that while the court 
was organizing, he had taken the opportunity, to ride over 
and examine the rice-field, in which the rogue had been 
started up. It was much trampled in places, and there 
were a great many foot-prints ; but they were all just alike, 
and seemed to have been made by the same person. He 
took a little stick from his pocketj on which, he said, he had 
carefully marked their exact length and breadth. 

Now this was a trick for detecting people, which Thomas 
understood very well ; and he had taken good care to be 
prepared for it. Our whole company were provided with 
shoes of the largest size we could get, and all exactly of 
the same pattern ; so that our tracks had the appearance of 
being made by a single person, and he a fellow with a very 
large foot. 

This speech of the overseer seemed to revive the droop- 
ing hopes of the judges ; and they made us all sit down 
upon the ground and have our feet measured. There was 
a man on the plantation named Billy, a harmless, stupid 
fellow, wholly unconnected with us; but unluckily for 
him, the only one of all the slaves whose foot corresponded 
at all with the measure. The length of this poor fellow's 
foot was fatal to him. The judges shouted with one voice, 


r " , f 






A FREEUOI.DERS’ COURT. Page 19r. 









A FUGITIVE. 


197 


and in the style of condemnation to be expected from such 
a court, that they would be damned if he was not the 
thief.” It was in vain that the poor fellow denied the charge 
and pleaded for mercy. His terror, confusion, and surprise, 
only served to confirm the opinion of his guilt ; and the 
more he denied, and the louder he pleaded, the more 
positively his judges were determined against him. Without 
further ceremony they pronounced him guilty, and sentenced 
him to be hung ! 

The sentence was no sooner pronounced than prepara- 
tions were made for its execution. An empty barrel was 
brought out, and placed under a tree that stood before the 
door. The poor fellow was mounted upon it ; the halter 
was put about his neck, and fastened to a limb over his 
head. The judges had already become so drunk as to 
have lost all sense of judicial decorum. One of them 
kicked away the barrel, and the unhappy victim of Carolina 
justice dropped struggling into eternity. 

The execution over, the slaves were sent into the field ; 
while Mr Martin, with the judges and witnesses, and several 
others whom the fame of the trial had drawn to Loosaha- 
chee, commenced a regular drunken debauch, which they 
kept up all that day, and the night following. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

The authority of masters over their slaves is in general 
a continual reign of terror. A base and dastard fear is the 
sole principle of human nature to which the slave-holder 
appeals. When it was determined to hang the poor fellow, 
whose fate I have described in the last chapter, his judges 
could not know, nor do I suppose, they much cared, 
whether he were innocent or guilty. Their great object 
was to terrify the survivors ; and by an example of what 
they would denominate wholesome and necessary severity, 
to deter from any further trespasses upon the neighboring 
plantations. In this they succeeded ; for though Thomas 


198 


MEMOIRS OF 


endeavored to keep up our spirits, we were thoroughly 
scared, and felt little inclination to second his boldness, 
which seemed to grow more determined, the more obsta- 
cles it encountered. 

One of our confederates in particular, was so alarmed at 
the fate of poor Billy, that he seemed to have lost all self- 
control ; and we were in constant fear lest he should betray 
us. When the first paroxysm of his terror was at its height, 
the evening after he had witnessed the execution, I believe 
he would gladly have confessed the whole, if he could have 
found a white, man sober enough to listen to him. After a 
while, he grew more calm ; but in the course of the day he 
had dropped some hints, which were carefully treasured up 
by one of the drivers. He reported them, as I discovered, 
to the overseer ; but Mr Martin had not yet recovered from 
the effects of the frolic ; and he was too drunk and stupid 
to understand a word that the driver said to him. 

We had begun to get the better of our fears, when a new 
incident happened, which determined us to seek our safety 
in flight. Some persons, in passing along the river bank, 
had discovered our canoe, which in the hurry of our retreat, 
we had taken too little care to conceal. It contained not 
only our bags full of rice, — for we had not yet recovered 
courage enough to go after them, — but our shoes also, all 
exactly of the same size, and corresponding with the meas- 
ure which had been produced upon the trial. Here was 
ample proof that quite a number had been engaged in the 
scheme of depredation ; and as one of the company had 
been traced to Loosahachee, it would be reasonable to look 
for the others upon the same plantation. Luckily I ob- 
tained an early intimation of this discovery, by means of 
one of the overseer’s house-servants, with whom I had the 
policy to keep up a pretty intimate connection. A man 
had arrived at the overseer’s house, his horse dripping with 
foam, — and with an appearance of great haste and impa- 
tience, he had asked to see the overseer. The moment he 
came in, the stranger requested to speak with him alone ; 
and Mr Martin took his guest into another room and locked 
the door. The girl, who was my spy and informant, under 
an appearance of the greatest simplicity, was artful and 


A FUGITIVE. 


199 


intelligent ; and she was prompted to overhear this secret 
convei'sation, as much by her own curiosity, as by the sus- 
picion that it might possibly be something, in which I would 
take an interest. She contrived to conceal herself in a 
closet, which was separated from the room in which the 
overseer and his visitor were conversing, only by a thin 
partition •; and having overheard his story, the substance of 
which I have already mentioned, — and learned besides, that 
the court would hold a new session at Loosahachee, the day 
following, — she hastened to inform me of what she had 
heard. She knew nothing in particular, of our affairs ; but 
she had reason to believe that this piece of news would not 
be entirely uninteresting to me. 

I informed Thomas of what she had told me. We agreed 
at once, that our best chance of safety was in flight ; and 
we immediately communicated our intention, and the cause 
of it, to the rest of our confederates. They were anxious 
to accompany us ; and we all resolved to be off that very 
night. 

As soon as evening came on, we stole away from the 
plantation and gained the woods in company. As we an- 
ticipated that a very diligent search would be made for us, 
we thought it best to separate. Thomas and myself resolved 
to keep together ; the others scattered and took various di- 
rections. As long as the darkness lasted, we travelled on 
as rapidly as we could. When the morning began to 
appear, we plunged into a thick swampy piece of woods, 
and having broken down some branches and young trees, 
we made as dry a bed as we were able, and lay dowif to 
sleep. We were much fatigued with our long and rapid 
journey, and slept soundly. It was past noon when we 
waked. Our appetites were sharp, but we had no provis- 
ions. Just as we were beginning to consider what course 
it would be best for us to pursue, we heard the distant bay- 
ing of a hound. Thomas listened for a moment, and then 
exclaimed that he knew that cry. It was a famous dog, a 
cross of the blood-hound, which Mr IMartin had long had in 
training, and upon whose performances in tracking out run- 
aways he very much prided himself. The place where we 
were, was a thick swamp, in which it was difficult to move, 


200 


MEMOIRS OF 


and not easy to stand. To cross it would be impossible ; 
and we resolved to get into the edge of it, where the ground 
was harder, and the undergrowth thinner, and to continue 
our flight. We did so; but the hound gained rapidly upon 
us, and his baying sounded louder and louder. Thomas 
drew a stout sharp knife, which he carried in his pocket. 
We were now just at the border where the dry ground 
came down upon the swamp, and looking behind us, across 
the level and open woods, we could see the hound coming 
on with his nose to the ground, and uttering at intervals a 
deep and savage cry. F arther behind, but still in full view, 
we saw a man on horseback, whom we took to be Mr 
Martin himself. 

The dog was evidently upon our track ; and following it 
to the place where we had first plunged into the swamp, he 
disappeared from our view. But we could still hear his 
clamor, which grew louder and almost constant ; and we 
soon perceived by the rustling and cracking of the under- 
wood that he was close upon us. At this moment we 
faced about, and stood at bay ; — Thomas in front, with his 
knife in hand, and I just behind, with a sharp and heavy 
lightwood knot, the best, indeed the only weapon, of which 
I could avail myself. Presently the dog emerged from the 
swamp. The moment he saw us, he redoubled his cry, 
and dashed forward foaming and open-mouthed. He made 
a great leap directly at Thomas’s throat, but only succeed- 
ed in seizing his left arm, which Thomas raised as a shield 
against the dog’s attack. At the same instant he dealt a 
stroke with his knife, which penetrated to the hilt, and dog 
and man came struggling to the ground. How the contest 
would have ended had Thomas been alone, is very doubt- 
ful; for though the hound soon received several wounds, 
they only seemed to increase his ferocity, and he still strug- 
gled to get at the throat of his antagonist. My lightwood 
knot now did good service. Two or three heavy blows 
upon the dog’s head laid him senseless and sprawling on 
the ground. 

While we had been awaiting the dog’s attack, and during 
the contest, we had scarcely thought of his master ; but 
looking up, after it was over, we discovered that Mr Martin 


A FUGITIVE. 


201 


was already very near us. When the dog took to the 
swamp, his master had followed along upon it's edge, and 
came suddenly upon us before we had expected him. He 
pointed his gun and called upon us to surrender. Thomas 
no sooner saw the overseer, than he seemed to lose all his 
self-control, and grasping his knife, he rushed directly upon 
him. ]Mr Martin fired ; — but the buck-shot rattled harm- 
lessly among the trees, and as he was attempting to wheel 
his horse, Thomas dashed upon him, seized him by the 
arm, and dragged him to the ground. The horse ran 
frightened through the woods ; and it was in vain that I 
attempted to stop him. We looked round in expectation 
of seeing some others of the huntsmen coming up. None 
were in sight ; and we seized the opportunity to retreat, 
and to carry our prisoner into the covert of the swamp. 

We learned fr9m him, that by the time the court and 
their attendants arrived at Loosahachee, our flight had been 
discovered, and that it was immediately resolved to raise 
the neighborhood, and to commence a general search for 
the runaways. All the horses, dogs and men that could 
be come at, were put into requisition. They were divided 
into parties, and immediately commenced beating through 
the woods and swamps in the neighborhood. 

A party of five or six men, with Mr Martin and his 
blood-hound, had traced three of our companions into a 
thick swamp, just on the bank of a river. The pursuers 
dismounted, and with their guns in their hands, they fol- 
lowed the dog into the thicket. Our poor fellows were^ so 
overcome with fatigue, that they slept till the very moment 
that the hound sprang in upon them. He seized one of 
them by the throat, and held him to the ground. The 
others ran ; and as they ran, the pursuers fked. One of 
the fugitives fell dead, horribly mangled and cut to pieces 
with buck-shot ; the other still continued his flight. As 
soon as the dog could be compelled to quit his hold of the 
man he had seized, — ^which was not without difficulty and 
delay, — he was put upon the tracl^ of the surviving fugitive. 
He followed it to the river, where he stood at fault. The 
man had probably plunged in, and swum to the other side ; 
but as the dog could not be made to take the water, and as 


202 


MEMOIRS OF 


the swamp on the opposite bank was reputed to be very 
soft and dangerous, no further pursuit was made ; the chase 
in that direction was given up, and the poor fellow was 
suffered to escape for the present. 

The pursuers now separated. Two of them undertook 
to carry back to Loosahachee the captive they had taken, 
and the other three, with Mr Martin and his hound, were 
to continue the hunt in search of the rest of us. They 
learned from their captive the place at which we had part- 
ed company, and ,the direction which the several parties 
had taken. After beating about for some time, the hound 
struck upon our trail, and opened in full cry ; but the 
horses of Mr Martin’s companions were so broken down, 
that when he began to spur on, to keep up with the hound, 
he soon left them far behind. ]\Ir Martin ended his story 
by advising us to go in and surrender ourselves ; giving us 
his word and honor as a gentleman and an overseer, that if 
we would offer him no further violence or injury, he would 
protect us from punishment, and reward us most handsomely. 

The sun was now setting. The short twilight which 
follows a Carolina sunset would soon be succeeded by the 
darkness of a cloudy and moonless night ; and we felt but 
little* apprehension of being immediately troubled by our 
pursuers. 1 looked at Thomas, as if to inquire what we 
had better do. He drew me aside, — ^having first examined 
the fastenings of our prisoner, whom we had bound to a 
tree, by some cords found in his own pocket, and which 
were doubtless intended for a very different purpose. 

Thomas paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts ; 
then pointing to Mr Martin, “ Archy,” he said, ‘‘ that man 
dies to-night.” 

There was a wild energy, and at the same time, a steady 
coolness, in the tone in which he spoke. It startled me ; 
at first I made no answer ; and as meanwhile I looked 
Thomas in the face, I saw there an expression of stern ex- 
ultation, and a fixedness of purpose not to be shaken. His 
eyes flashed fire, as he repeated, — ^but in a low and quiet 
tone that contrasted strangely with the matter of his speech, 
— “ I tell you, Archy, that man dies to-night. She com- 
mands it ; I have promised it ; and now the time is come.” 


A FUGITIVE. 


203 


“ Who coaimands it ?” I hastily inquired. 

Do you ask who ? Archy, that man was the murderer 
of my wife.” 

Though Thomas and I had lived in great intimacy, this 
was almost the first time, since the death of his wife, that he 
had mentioned her to me in such plain terms. He had, it 
is true, now and then made some distant allusions to her ; 
and I recollected that on several occasions before, he had 
dropped some strange and incoherent hints about an inter- 
course which he still kept up with her. 

The mention of his wife, brought tears into his eyes ; — 
but with his hand, he wiped them hastily away, and soon 
recovering his former air of calm and steady determina- 
tion, he again repeated, in the same low but resolute tone, 
Archy, I tell you that man dies to-night.” 

When I called to mind all the circumstances that had 
attended the death of Thomas’s wife, I could not but 
acknowledge that Mr Martin had been her murderer. I 
had sympathized with Thomas then, and I sympathized 
with him now. The murderer was in his power ; he 
believed himself called upon to execute justice upon him ; 
and 1 could not but acknowledge that his death would be 
an act of righteous retribution. 

Still, I felt a sort of instinctive horror at the idea of shed- 
ding blood ; and perhaps too, there still crept about my 
heart some remains of that slavish fear and servile timidity, 
which the bolder spirit of Thomas had wholly shaken off. 
I acknowledged that the life of the overseer was justly 
forfeit ; — but at the same time, I reminded Thomas that 
Mr Martin had promised, if we would carry him home in 
safety, to procure our pardon and protect us from punish- 
ment. 

A scornful smile played about the lip of my comrade 
while I was speaking. “Yes, Archy,” he answered, “par- 
don and protection ! — and a hundred lashes, and a hanging 
the next day perhaps. No ! boy, I want no such pardon ; 
I want no pardon such as they will give. I have been a 
slave too long, already. I am now free ; and when they 
take me, they are welcome to take my life. Besides, we 
pannot trust him ; — if we washed it, we cannot trust him. 


204 


MEMOIRS OF 


You know we cannot. They do not think themselves 
obliged to keep any promises they make us. They will 
promise any thing to get us in their power ; and then, their 
promises are worthless as rotten straw. My promises are 
not like theirs ; and have I not told you that I have prom- 
ised it? Yes, I have sworn it; and I now say, once for 
all, that man must die to-night.” 

There was a strength and a determination, in his tone 
and manner, which overpowered me. I could resist it no 
longer, and I bade him do his pleasure. He loaded the 
gun, which he had taken from ^Ir Martin, and which he 
had held in his hand all the time we had been talking. 
This done, we returned to the overseer, who was sitting at 
the foot of the tree to which we had bound him. He 
looked up anxiously at us as we approached^ and inquired 
if we had determined to go in ? 

We have determined,” answered Thomas. “ We- 
allow you half an hour to prepare for death. IMake the 
most of it. You have many sins to repent of, and the time 
is short.” 

It is impossible to describe the look of mingled terror, 
amazement and incredulity, with which the overseer heard 
these words. One moment, with a voice of authority, he 
bade us untie him; the next, he forced a laugh, and aftected 
to treat what Thomas had said, as a mere jest; then, yield- 
ing to his fears, he wept like a child, and cried and l3egged 
for mercy. 

Have you shown it ? ” answered Thomas. “ Did you 
show it to my poor wife? You murdered her; and for hei 
life you must answer with your own.” 

IMr Martin called God to witness, that he was not guilty 
of this charge. He had punished Thomas’s wife, he con- 
fessed ; but he did only what his duty as an overseer 
demanded ; and it was impossible, he said, that the few 
cuts he gave her, could have caused her death. 

The few cuts ! ” cried Thomas. Thank God, Mr 
Martin, that we do not torture you as you tortured her! 
Speak no more, or you will but aggravate your sufferings. 
Confess your crimes ! Say your prayers ! Do not spend 
your last moments in adding falsehood to murder 1 ” 


A FUGITIVE. 


205 


The overseer cowered beneath this energetic reproof. 
He covered his face with his hands, bent down his head, 
and passed a few moments in a silence which was only- 
interrupted by an inarticulate sobbing. Perhaps, he was 
trying to prepare himself to die. But life was too sweet 
to be surrendered without another effort to save it. He 
saw that it was useless to appeal to Thomas ; but rousing 
himself once more, he turned to me. He begged me to 
remember the confidence, he had once placed in me, and 
the favors, which as he said, he had shown me. He prom- 
ised to purchase us both, and give us our liberty, any thing, 
every thing, if we would only spare his life ! 

His tears and piteous lamentations moved me. My head 
grew dizzy, and I felt such a. faintness and heart-sinking, 
that I was obliged to support myself against a tree. Thom- 
as stood by, with his arms folded and resting on the gun. 
He made no answer to the reiterated prayers and promises 
of the overseer. Indeed he did not appear to notice them. 
His eyes were fixed, and he seemed lost in thought. 

After a considerable interval, during which the unhappy 
overseer continued to repeat his prayers and lamentations, 
Thomas roused himself. He stepped back a few paces, 
and raised the gun. “ The half hour is out,” he said ; — 
“ Mr Martin, are you ready ? ” 

No 1 oh no ! Spare me, oh spare me ! — one half hour 
longer — I have much — ” 

He did not live to finish the sentence. The gun flashed ; 
the ball penetrated his brain, and he fell dead without a 
struggle. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

We scraped a shallow grave, in which we placed the 
body of the overseer. We dragged the dead hound to the 
same spot, and laid him with his master. They were fit 
companions. 

We now resumed our flight, — ^not as some may perhaps 
suppose, with the frightened and conscience-stricken haste 
18 


206 


MEMOIRS OF 


of murderers, but with that lofty feeling of ♦nanhood vindi- 
cated, and tyranny visited with a just retribution, which 
animated the soul of the Israelitish hero whilst he fled for 
refuge into the country of the Midianites ; and which burned 
in the bosoms of Wallace and of Tell, as they pursued their 
midnight flight among the friendly cliffs and freedom-breatli- 
ing summits of their native mountains. 

There were no mountains to receive and shelter us. But 
still we fled through the swamps and barrens of Carolina, 
resolved to put, as soon as possible, some good miles be- 
tween us and the neighborhood of Loosahachee. It was 
more than twenty-four hours since we had tasted food ; yet 
such was the excitement of our minds that we did not faint, 
and were hardly sensible of weakness or fatigue. 

We kept a northwesterly direction, steering our course 
by the stars, and we must have made a good distance ; for 
we did not once stop to rest, but pushed forward at a very 
rapid pace all night. Our way lay through the open ‘‘ piney 
woods,” through which we could travel almost as fast as on 
a road. Sometimes a swamp or the appearances of a plan- 
tation, would compel us to deviate from our track, but as 
soon as we could, we resumed our original direction. 

The darkness of the night, which for the last hour or two 
that it lasted, had been increased by a foggy mist, was just 
beginning to yield to the first indistinct grey dawn of the 
morning. We were passing along a little depression in the 
level of the pine barrens, now dry, but in the wet season, 
probably the bed of a temporary stream, locking for a 
place in which to conceal ourselves, — when we suddenly 
came upon a man, lying, as it seemed, asleep in the midst 
of a clump of bushes, with his head resting on a bag of 
corn. We recognized him at once. He was a slave 
belonging to a plantation next adjoining Loosahachee, with 
whom we had had some slight acquaintance, but who, as 
we were informed, had been a runaway, for some two or 
three months past. Thomas shook him by the shoulder, 
and he wakened in a terrible fright. W e told him not to 
be alarmed, for we were runaways like himself, and very 
much in need of his assistance, being half dead with hun 
ger, and in a country with which we were totally unac- 


A FUGITIVE. * 


207 . 


quainted. At**first the man appeared very reserved and 
suspicious. He feared it seemed, lest we might be decoys, 
sent out on purpose to entrap him. At last however, we 
succeeded in dissipating his doubts ; and no sooner was he 
satisfied with the account we gave of ourselves, than he 
bade us follow him, and we should presently have food. 

With his bag of corn upon his shoulder he pursued the 
shallow ravine in which we had found him, for a mile or 
more, till at length it widened into what seemed a large 
swamp, or rather a pond grown up with trees. We now 
left the ravine, and followed along on the edge of the pond 
for some distance, when presently our guide began wading 
in the water, and called to us to follow him. We plunged 
in ; but before going far, he laid down his bag of corn upon 
a fallen tree, and going back, he carefully effaced the marks 
which our footsteps had made upon the muddy edge of tlie 
pond. He now led us forward through mud and water up 
to our waists, for near half a mile. The gigantic trees 
among which we were wading, sprung up like columns, 
from the surface of the water, with round, straight, whitish- 
colored, branchless trunks, their leafy tops forming a thick 
canopy over head. Th^re was scarcely any undergrowth, 
except a species of enormous vines, which ran twining like 
great cables about the bodies of the trees, and reaching 
to the very topsj helped with their foliage to thicken 
the canopy above us. So effectually was the light ex- 
cluded, and- so close did the trunks of the trees stand to- 
gether, that one could see but a very little way into this 
watery forest. 

The water began to grow deeper, and the wood more 
gloomy, and we were wondering whither our guide was 
leading us, when presently we came to a little island which 
rose a few feet from the surface of the water, so regular and 
rnound-like, that it had quite the appearance of an artificial 
structure. Perhaps it was the work of the ancient inhab- 
itants of the country, and the site of one of their forts or 
fastnesses. It was about an acre in extent, and was covered 
with a thick growth of trees, quite different however, from 
those of the lake by which it was surrounded, and much in- 
ferior in size and majesty. Its edges were bordered by low 


208 


• MEMOIRS OF 


shrubs and bushes, whose abundant foliage gave the islet 
the appearance of a mass of green. Our guide pointed out 
to us a little opening in the bushes, through which we 
ascended ; and after having gained the dry land, he led us 
through the thicket along a narrow and winding path, till 
presently we came to a rude cabin built of bark and 
branches. He now gave a peculiar whistle, which was 
immediately answered; and two or three men presently 
made their appearance. 

They seemed a good deal surprised at seeing us, and me 
especially, whom apparently they took for a freeman. But 
our guide assured them that we were friends and fellow- 
sufferers, and led the way into the cabin. Our new hosts 
received us kindly ; and having heard how long we had 
been without food, before asking us any furtlier questions, 
they hastened to satisfy our hunger. They produced beef 
and hominy in abundance, on which we feasted to our 
hearts’ content. 

We were then called upon^to give an account of our- 
selves. Accordingly we made a relation of our adventures, 
— omitting however, any mention of the fate of the over- 
seer ; and as our guide, who knew us, could confirm a part 
of our story, our account was pronounced satisfactory, and 
we were presently admitted to the privilege of joining their 
fraternity. 

There were six of them, besides ourselves ; — all brave 
fellows, who weary of daily task-work and the .tyranny of 
overseers, had taken to the woods, and had succeeded in 
regaining a savage and stealthy freedom, which, with all 
its hardships and dangers, was a thousand times to be pre- 
ferred to the forced labor and wretched servitude from 
which they had escaped. Our guide was the only one of 
them whom we had ever seen till now. The leader of the 
band had fled from his master’s plantation in the neighbor- 
hood, with a single companion, some two or three years 
before. They did not then know of the existence of this 
retreat ; but being sharply pursued, they had attempted to 
cross the pond or swamp, by which it was surrounded, — a 
thing, I suppose, which had never been tried before. In 
this attempt they were fortunate enough to light upon the 


A FUGITIVE. 


209 


islet, which being unknown to any one else, had ever since 
served them as a secure retreat. They soon picked up a 
recruit or two ; and had afterwards been joined by their 
other companions. 

Our guide, it seems, had been to a neighboring planta- 
tion to trade for corn ; — a traffic, which our friends carried 
on with the slaves of several of the nearest plantations. 
After the business was concluded, the men with whom he 
had been dealing, had produced a bottle of ^vhiskey of 
which our guide had drank so freely, that he had not gone 
far on his way home, before his legs failed him. He sunk 
down in the place where we had found him, and fell fast 
asleep. 

Drinking whiskey away from home, according to the 
prudent laws of this swamp-encircled commonwealth, was 
a high misdemeanor, punishable with thirty-nine lashes, 
which were forthwith inflicted upon our guide with a good 
deal of emphasis. He took it in good part though, as being 
the execution of a law to which he had himself assented, 
and which he knew was enacted as much for his own 
benefit, as for the benefit of those who had just now carried 
it into execution. 

The life upon which we. now entered had at least, the 
charm of novelty. In the day time we eat, slept, told 
stories and recounted our escapes ; or employed ourselves 
in dressing skins, making clothes, and curing provisions. 
But the night was our season of adventure and enterprise. 
As the autumn was coming on, we made frequent visits to 
the neighboring corn fields and potato patches, which we 
felt no scruples whatever in laying under severe contribu- 
tion. This however was only for a month or two. Our 
regular and certain supply was in the herds of half wild 
cattle, which wander through the piney woods ” and feed 
upon the coarse grass which they furnish. We killed as 
many of these cattle as we needed, and their flesh cut into 
long strips, we dried in the sun. Thus cured, it is a pal- 
atable food ; and we not only kept a stock on hand for our 
own consumption, but it furnished the principal article of a 
constant but cautious traffic which, as I have already men- 
tioned, we carried ou with the slaves of several neighboring 
plantations. 

18 * 


210 


MEMOIRS OF 


This wild life of the woods has its privations and its 
sufferings ; but it has too, its charms and its pleasures ; and 
in its very worst aspect, it is a thousand and ten thousand 
times to be preferred to that miscalled civilization which 
degrades the noble savage into a cringing and broken-spir- 
ited slave ; — a civilization, which purchases the indolence 
and luxury of a single master, with the sighs and tears, the 
forced and unwilling labor, the degradation, misery and 
despair of a hundred of his fellow men ! Yes — there is 
more of true"* manhood in the bold bosom of a single outlaw 
than in a whole nation of cowardly tyrants and crouching 
slaves ! 


CHAPTER XXXIL 

By the end of the winter, the herds of cattle which were 
accustomed to frequent our neighborhood, were a good deal 
thinned ; and the pasturage had now become so bare and 
withered, that what remained of them were little better 
than walking skeletons, and in fact, scarcely worth the 
trouble of killing. 

Moreover, the overseers of the neighboring plantations, 
were beginning to be very well aware that they were ex- 
posed to some pretty regular and diligent depredators. We 
learned from the slaves with whom we trafficked, that there 
was a good deal of talk about the rapid disappearance of 
the cattle ; and that preparations were making for a grand 
hunt in search of the plunderers. 

With the double object of disappointing these prepara- 
tions, and of getting among some fresh herds of cattle, it 
was resolved that five of us should make an excursion to a 
considerable distance, while the other tw(5 remained at home 
and kept close. 

One of our number undertook to lead us into the neigh- 
borhood of a plantation beyond the Santee, on which he 
had been raised. He knew all the country about it per- 
fectly well. There were several good hiding places, he 
said, in which we could conceal ourselves in the day time ; 


A FUGITIVE. 


211 


and the extensive woods and wastes furnished a good range, 
and abundance of cattle. 

We set off under his guidance, and kept on for several 
days, or nights rather, in a northwardly direction. On the 
fifth or sixth evening of our journey, we started soon after 
sun-set, and having travelled till a little past midnight, 
through a country of abrupt and barren sand hills, our guide 
told us that we were now in the neighborhood into which 
he intended to carry us. But as the moon had gone down, 
and it was cloudy and quite dark, he was rather uncertain 
as to the precise place we were at ; and we should do best, 
he said, to camp where we were, till day-light, when he 
would lead us to some better place of concealment. 

This advice was very acceptable ; — for by this time, we 
were way-worn, tired, and sleepy. We kindled a fire, 
cooked the last of the provisions we had brought with us, 
and having appointed one of our number to keep watch, 
the rest of us lay down and were soon fast asleep. 

I, at least, was sleeping soundly, and dreaming of poor 
Gassy and our infant child, when my dream was interrupted, 
and I was roused from my slumbers, by what seemed a dis- 
charge of fire-arms and a galloping of horses. I sprang 
upon my feet, hardly knowing whether I was awake. At 
the same moment, my eye fell upon Thomas, who had been 
sleeping beside me, and I perceived that his clothes were 
all stained with blood. He had already gained his feet ; 
and without stopping to hear or see any thing further, we 
sprung together into the nearest thicket, and fled for some 
time, we scarcely knew where or why. At last, Thomas 
cried out that he could go no further. The bleeding of 
his wounds had weakened him much, and they were now 
growing stiff and painful. The morning was just beginning 
to dawn. We sat down upon the ground, and endeavored 
to bind up his wounds the best we were able. A ball or 
buck-shot had passed through the fleshy part of his left 
arm, between the shoulder and elbow. Another shot had 
struck him in the side, — ^but as far as we could judge, had 
glanced on one of his ribs, and so passed off without doing 
any mortal injury. These wounds had bled profusely, and 
were now very painful. We bound them up as well as we 


212 


MEMOIRS OF 


could ; and looking round we found a little stream of water 
with which to wash away the blood, and quench our thirst. 

Thus recruited and refreshed, we began to consider 
which way we should turn, and what we were to do. We 
did not dare to go back to the camp where we had slept ; 
indeed we were very doubtful whether we were able to do 
so ; for the morning had been dark, and we had fled with 
heedless haste, taking very little note of our direction. Our 
island retreat was at the distance of some seven or eight 
days journey ; and as we had travelled in the night, and 
not always in precisely the same direction, it would be no 
very easy matter to find our way back again. However, 
Thomas prided himself upon his woodmanship, and though 
he had not observed the course of our journey quite so 
closely as he could have wished, he still thought that he 
might succeed in finding the way back. 

But his wounds were too recent, and he felt too weak, 
to think of starting off immediately. Besides it was already 
broad day-light ; and we had the best of reasons for travel- 
ling only by night. So we sought out a thicket in which 
we concealed ourselves till night-fall. 

As the evening came*on, Thomas declared that he felt 
much better and stronger ; and we resolved to set out at 
pjjpe, on our return. In the first place however, we deter- 
mined to make an attempt to find the camp of the preceding 
night, in hopes that some of our companions might have 
escaped as well as ourselves, and that by some good luck, 
we might chance to fall in with them. 

After wandering about for some time, at length we found 
the camp. Two dead bodies, stiff and bloody, lay by the 
extinguished embers of the fire. They seemed to have 
been shot dead as they slept, and scarcely to have moved 
a limb. The bushes about were stained and spattered with 
blood ; and by the moon light, we tracked the bloody flight 
of one of our luckless companions for a considerable dis- 
tance. This must have been our sentinel, who had proba- 
bly dropped asleep, and thus exposed us to be surprised. 

Perhaps he might be lurking somewhere in the bushes, 
wounded and helpless. This thought emboldened us. We 
shouted and called aloud. But our voices echoed through 


A FUGITIVE. 


213 


the woods, and died away unanswered. We returned 
again to the camp, and gazed once more upon the distorted 
faces of our dead companions. We could not bear to leave 
them unburied. I hastily scraped a shallow trench, and 
there we placed them. We dropped a tear upon their 
grave, and sad, dismayed, dejected, we set out upon our 
long, weary and uncertain journey. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

We travelled slowly all that night, and soon after the 
morning dawn, we concealed ourselves again, and lay down 
to sleep. Thomas’s wounds were much better, and seemed 
disposed to heal. The hurt in his side was far less danger- 
ous than we had at first supposed, and as the pain had 
subsided, he was now able to sleep. 

We slept well enough, but awoke weak and faint for 
want of food ; for it was now some twenty-four hours since 
we had tasted any. The sun was not yet down ; yet we 
resolved to set out immediately, in hopes that day-light 
might point out to us something -with which to satisfy our 
hunger. 

After travelling a considerable distance through the 
woods, just as the sun was setting, we struck into a road. 
This road we determined to follow, in hopes that it might 
presently lead us into the neighborhood of some farm-house 
near which we might light upon something eatable. It 
was an unlucky resolve ; for we had not gone above half a 
mile, when just upon the crest of a short hill, we suddenly 
came upon three travellers on horseback, whom the undu- 
lations of the. road had concealed from us, till we were 
within a few yards of each other.* 

Both parties were mutually surprised. The travellers 
reined up their horses and eyed us sharply. Our appear- 
ance might well attract attention. Our clothes, — such as 
we had, — were torn and ragged. Instead of shoes, we 
wore a kind of high moccasins, made of untaniied ox-hide ; 


214 


MEMOIRS OF 


we had caps of the same material ; and the dresses of both 
of us, especially of Thomas, were spattered and stained 
with blood. 

They took me for a freeman, and one of them called 
out, “ Hallo, stranger, who are you and where are you go- 
ing ? — and whose fellow is that you have along ? ” 

I did my best to take advantage of my color, and to seem 
what they took me for. But this I soon found would not 
avail ; for though apparently at first, they did not suspect 
that I was a slave, yet our appearance was so strange/ that 
they questioned me very closely. As I had no very defi- 
nite idea where we were, and was totally unacquainted with 
the neighborhood, I was not at all able to hit upon appro- 
priate answers to the numerous questions they put me; and 
my statements soon grew confused and contradictory. This 
served to excite their suspicions ; and while I was attend- 
ing to the questions of the one who acted as chief spokes- 
man, another of the company suddenly sprang from his 
horse, and seizing me by the collar, swore that I was either 
a runaway, or a negro-stealer. The other two juipped down 
in a moment ; and while one of them caught me by the 
arm, the other attempted to seize Thomas. 

He eluded this attempt and turned to run. He had gone 
but a little distance, when looking back and seeing me on 
the ground, he forgot at once, his wounds, his weakness and 
his own danger. He grasped his staff, and rushed to my 
rescue. They had throttled me till I was powerless and 
almost insensible ; and while one of them still held me to 
the ground, the other stood up to meet Thomas, who as he 
turned short about, had struck his pursuer to the earth, and 
now came on to my relief, with his staff uplifted. His new 
antagonist was both strong and active. He succeeded in 
avoiding the stroke of Thomas’s cudgel, and immediately 
closed with him. Thomas had but little use of one arm ; 
and his strength was much reduced by loss of blood and 
long fasting ; but he struggled hard, and was already getting 
the upper hand, when the fellow whom he had knocked 
down at the commencement of the fight, regained his senses, 
and came to the assistance of his companion. Both to- 
gether, they were too much for him ; and they soon got 


A FUGITIVE. 


215 


nim down and bound his hands. They did the same with 
me ; and one of them having produced a piece of rope from 
his saddle-bags, they made halters of it, which they put 
about our nocks, and by the application of their whips, they 
compelled us to keep up with their horses. 

In about half an hour, we came to a mean and forlorn- 
looking cabin, by the road-side. It appeared to be a sort 
of inn, or tavern ; and here we were to lodge. The only 
persons about the house seemed to be the landlady herself 
and a little daughter some ten or twelve years old. The 
whole appearance of the place bore evident marks of dis- 
comfort and poverty. Our captors had no sooner provided 
for their horses, than they called for chains ; — trace-chains 
they said, or in fact any thing in the shape of a chain, 
would answer their purpose. But much to their disap- 
pointment, the landlady declared that she had nothing of 
the sort. However she procured some old rope ; and hav- 
ing secured u^ as effectually as they could, they made us sit 
down in the passage. 

The landlady told them, that in all probability, we were 
runaways ; for the neighborhood had lately been much 
troubled by them. A company of five or six men, she said, 
had gone out two or three nights since on purpose to hunt 
up the rascals, and had unexpectedly come upon quite a 
party, asleep in the woods around a fire. 

The gang seemed too large to be easily taken, but it was 
resolved that the fellows should not escape ; especially as 
the man whose slaves they were supposed to be, and who 
was one of the party, openly declared ,that he had rather 
they were all shot, than to have them wandering about 
the country useless to him, and mischievous to his neigh- 
bors. 

The company separated and each man approached from 
a different point. Upon a given signal, all fired ; and then 
putting spurs to their horses, they rode off and returned home 
each by himself. Nobody had stopped to see what execution 
was done ; but as the men were all good shots, it was sup- 
posed that most of the runaways were either killed or des- 
perately wounded ; and as our clothes were bloody, and 
one of us was hurt, she thought it likely, she said, that we 
Delonged to that same gang. 


216 


MEMOIRS OF 


It appeared in the course of the conversation between 
the landlady and her guests, that the murderous kind of at- 
tack to which our companions had fallen victims, but which 
had been intended for another party of runaways, is an 
operation occasionally practised in Lower Carolina, when a 
party of slave-hunters falls in with a gang of fugitive slaves 
too large to be easily arrested. 

The dispersion of the attacking party, and each one 
shooting and returning by himself, is- only the effect of 
an ancient and traditionary prejudice. By the law of Car- 
olina, the killing a slave is regarded as murder ; and though 
probably, this law was never enforced, and would doubtless 
be treated by a jury of modem slave-holders, as an old- 
fashioned and fanatical absurdity, there still linger, in the 
breasts of the people, some remains of horror at the idea of 
deliberate bloodshed, and a sort of superstitious apprehen- 
sion of the possible enforcement of this antiquated law. To 
blindfold their own consciences, and to avoid -the possibility 
of a judicial investigation, each man of an attacking party 
takes care to see none of the others when they fire ; and no 
one goes to the place to ascertain how many have been 
killed or disabled. The poor wretches who are not so for- 
tunate as to be shot dead upon the spot, are left to the lin- 
gering torments of thirst, fever, starvation and festering 
wounds ; and when at length they die, their skeletons lie 
bleaching in the Carolina sun, proud proofs of slave-holding 
civilization and humanity. 

While our captors were at supper, the little girl, the 
landlady’s daughter, came to look at us, as we lay in the 
passage. She was a pretty child, and her soft blue eyes 
filled with tears as she looked upon us. I asked her for 
water. She ran to get it for us ; and inquired if we did not 
want something to eat. I told her that we were half dead 
with hunger ; and she no sooner heard it, than she hastened 
away, and soon returned with a large cake of bread. 

Our arms were bound so tight that we were utterly help- 
less, and the little girl broke the bread, and fed us with her 
own hand. 

Is not this one instance enough to prove that nature nevei 
intended man to be a tyrant ? Avarice, a blind lust of dom- 


A FUGITIVE. 


217 


matioii, the false but specious suggestions of ignorance and 
passion combine to make him so ; and pity at length, is 
banished from his soul. It then seeks refuge in the woman’s 
heart ; and when the progress of oppression drives it even 
thence, as sad and hesitating, it prepares to wing its way to 
heaven, still it lurks and lingers in the bosom of the child ! 

By listening closely to the conversation of the travellers, 
— for by this time the landlady had produced a jug of 
whiskey, and they had become very communicative, — we 
learned that we were Avithin a few miles of the town of 
Camden, and on the great northern road leading from that 
town into North Carolina. Our captors it seemed, were 
from the upper-country. They had not passed through 
Camden, but had struck into this road very near the place 
where they met us. They were travelling into Virginia to 
purchase slaves. 

After discussing the question at considerable length, they 
concluded to delay their journey for a day or two, and to 
take us to Camden, in hopes to find our owner and obtain 
a reward for apprehending us ; or if nobody should claim 
us immediately, they could lodge us in jail, advertise us in 
the newspapers, and give further attention to the business 
upon their return. 

By this time, the whiskey jug was emptied, and the 
travellers made preparations for sleeping. There were but 
two rooms in the house. The landlady and her daughter 
had one ; and some beds were prepared for the guests, in 
the other. We were carried into their room ; and after 
again lamenting that the landlady could not furnish them 
with chains, they carefully examined and retightened the 
ropes with which w'e were bound, and then undressed and 
threw themselves upon their beds. They were probably 
fatigued with their journey, and the whiskey increased their 
drowsy inclination ; so that before long, they all gave evi- 
dent tokens of being in a sound slumber. 

I envied them that happiness; for the tightness of my 
bonds, and the uneasy position in which I was obliged to 
lie, prevented me from sleeping. The moonbeams shone 
m at the window, and made every object distinctly visible. 
Thomas and myself were lamenting in whispers, our wretch- 
19 


218 


MEMOIRS OF 


ed condition, and consulting hopelessly together, when we 
saw the door of the room cautiously and silently opening. 
In a moment, the landlady’s little daughter made her ap- 
pearance. She came towards us with noiseless steps, and 
one hand raised, as if motioning to us to be silent. In the 
other, she held a knife ; and stooping down she hastily cut 
the cords by which we were bound. 

We did not dare to speak ; but our hearts beat hard, and 
I am sure our looks expressed the gratitude we felt. We 
gained our feet with as little noise as possible, and were 
stealing towards the door, when a new thought struck Thom- 
as. He laid his hand upon my shoulder to draw my atten- 
tion, and then began to pick up the coat, shoes, and other 
clothes of one of our captors. At once I understood his 
intention, and imitated his example. The little girl seemed 
astonished and displeased at this proceeding, and motioned 
to us to desist. But without seeming to understand her 
gestures, we gained the door with the clothes in our hands ; 
and passing out of the passage, we walked slowly and 
cautiously for some distance, taking good heed, lest the 
sound of our footsteps might give an alarm. In the mean 
time, the little girl patted the house dog on the head, and 
kept him quiet. When we had gained a sufficient distance, 
we started upon a run, which we did not give over till we 
were fairly out of breath. 

As soon as we had recovered ourselves a little, we 
stripped off our ragged dresses, and hid them in the bushes. 
Luckily the clothes which we had brought off in our flight, 
fitted us very tolerably, and gave us a much more respecta- 
ble, and less suspicious appearance. We now went on for 
two or three miles, till we came to a road that crossed the 
one upon which we were travelling, and ran off towards 
the south. 

In all this time, Thomas had said nothing; nor did he 
scarcely seem to notice my remarks, or to hear the ques- 
tions, which, from time to time, I put to him. When we 
came to the cross-road, he suddenly stopped, and took me 
ny the arm. I supposed that he was going to consult with 
me, as to the course which we should take .; and great was 
my surprise to hear him say, Archy, here I leave you.” 


EMANCIPATION. Page 218. 





/ 












* 



4 


4 • 



A FUGITIVE. 


219 


^ I could not imagine what he intended, and I looked at 
him for an explanation. 

You are now,” he said, ‘^on the road to the north. 
You have good clothes, and as much learning as an over- 
seer. You can readily pass for a freeman. It will be 
very easy for you to get away to those free States of which 
I have heard you speak so often. If I go with you, we 
shall both he stopped and questioned. We shall be pur- 
sued ; and if we keep together, and follow this road, we 
shall certainly be taken. It is a great way to the free 
States, and I have little chance and no hope of ever getting 
there; and if I did, what should I gain by it? I will try 
the woods again, and do as I can. I shall be able to get 
back to our old place; — ^but you, Archy, you can do better. 
You are sure of getting away to the north. Go, my boy, 
go, and God bless you.” 

I w'as deeply moved ; and it was some time before I was 
able to reply. The thoughts of escaping from my present 
situation of danger and misery, to a land where I could 
bear the name, and enjoy the rights of a freeman, flashed 
upon my mind with a radiant and dazzling brightness that 
seemed almost to blot out every other feeling. Yet still my 
love for Thomas, and the gratitude I owed him, glimmered 
through these new hopes ; and a low voice from the very 
centre of my heart, bade me not to desert my friend. After 
too long a pause, and too much hesitation, I began to 
answer him. I spoke of his wounds ; of our sworn friend- 
ship ; and of the .risk he had so lately run in my behalf; 
and insisted that I would stay with him to the last. 

I spoke, I fear, with too little of zeal and earnestness. 
At least, all that I said, only seemed to confirm Thomas in 
his determination. He replied that his wounds were heal- 
ing ; and that he was already almost as strong as ever. He 
added, that if I stayed with him, I might do myself much 
harm without the chance of doing him any good. He 
pointed along the road, and in an energetic and com- 
manding voice, he bade me follow it, while he should take 
the cross-road towards the south. 

When Thomas had once made up his mind, there was a 
firmness in the tone with which he spoke, suflicient often to 


220 


MEMOIRS OF 


overawe the most unwilling. At the present moment, 1 
was but too ready to be prevailed upon. He saw his ad- 
vantage and pursued it. ^‘Go, Arcby,” be repeated, “go; 
— if not for your own sake, go for mine ! If you stay with 
me, and are taken, I shall never forgive you for it.” 

Little by little, my better feelings yielded ; and at last I 
consented to the separation. I took Thomas by the hand, 
and pressed him to my heart. A nobler Spirit never 
breathed ; — I was not worthy to call myself his friend. 

“ God bless you, Archy,” he said, as he left me. I 
stood watching him as he walked rapidly away ; and as I 
looked, I was ready to sink into the earth with shame and 
mortification. Once or twice, I was just starting to follow 
him ; but selfish prudence prevailed, and I held back. I 
watched him till he was out of sight, and then resumed my 
journey. It was a base desertion, which not even the love of 
liberty could excuse. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

I WALKED on as fast as I was able, till after daylight, 
without meeting a single individual, or passing more than 
two or three mean and lonely houses. Just as the sun was 
rising, I gained the top of a considerable hill. Here there 
was a small house by the road side ; and a horse saddled 
and bridled was tied to a tree near by. The animal was 
sleek, and in good condition ; and from the cut of the 
saddle-bags I took him to belong to some doctor, who had 
come thus early to visit a patient. It was a tempting 
opportunity. I looked cautiously this way and that, and. 
seeing nobody, I unfastened the horse, and jumped into the 
saddle. I walked him a little distance, but presently put 
him into a gallop, that soon carried me out of sight of the 
house. 

This was a very lucky acquisition ; for as I was upon 
the same road, which the travellers from whom I had 
escaped would follow, as soon as they resumed their 
ioumey, I was in manifest danger of being overtaken and 


A FUGITIVE. 


221 


recognized. As I found that my horse had both spirit and 
bottom, I put him to his speed, and went forward at a rapid 
rate. My good luck did not end here ; for happening to 
put my hand into the pocket of my new coat, I drew out a 
pocket-book, which beside a parcel of musty papers, I 
found on examining it a little, to contain quite a pretty sum 
of money in bank notes. This discovery gave a new im- 
pulse to my spirits, which were high enough before ; and I 
pushed on all day without stopping, except now and then to 
rest my horse in the shade of a tree. 

Towards evening I got a supper, and corn for my horse, 
at a little hedge tavern ; and waiting till the moon rose, I 
set out again. By morning, my horse was completely 
broken down, and gave out entirely. Thankful for his 
services thus far, — for according to my reckoning he had 
carried me upwards of a hundred miles in the twenty-four 
hours, — I stripped off his saddle and bridle, and turned him 
into a heat-field to refresh himself. I now pursued my jour- 
ney on foot ; for I feared if I kept the horse, the possession 
of him might perhaps get me into difiiculty ; and in fact, he 
was so jaded and worn out, that he would be of very little 
use to me. I had got a good start upon the travellers, and 
I did not doubt that I could get on as fast upon foot, as they 
would on horseback. 

Before sunset, I arrived at a considerable village. Here I 
indulged myself in a hearty meal, and a good night’s sleep. 
Both were needed ; for what with watching, fasting, and 
fatigue, I was quite worn out. I slept some ten horn’s, and 
awoke with new vigor. I now resumed my journey which 
I pursued without much fear of interruption ; though I 
judged it prudent to stop but seldom, and to push forward as 
rapidly as possible. I kept on through North Carolina and 
Virginia ; crossed the Potomac into Maryland ; and avoid- 
ing Baltimore, I passed on into Pennsylvania, and congratu- 
lated myself that at last I trod a soil, cultivated by freemen. 

I had gone but a very few miles, before I perceived the 
difference. In fact, I had scarcely passed the slave-holding 
border, before the change became apparent. The spring 
was just opening, and every thing was beginning to look 
fresh, vreen, and beautiful. The nicely cultivated fields, 

° 19 * 


222 


MEMOIRS OF 


the numerous small enclosures, the neat and substantia, 
farm-houses, thickly scattered along the way, the pretty vil- 
lages, and busy towns, the very roads themselves, which 
were covered with wagons and travellers, — all these signs 
of universal thrift and comfort, gave abundant evidence, that 
at length I saw a country where labor was honorable, and 
where every one labored for himself. It was an exhila- 
rating and delightful prospect, and in strong contrast with 
all I had seen in the former part of my journey, in which 
a wretched and lonely road had led me on through a vast 
monotonous extent of unprofitable woods, deserted fields 
grown over with broomsedge and mullen, or fields just ready 
to be deserted, gullied, barren and with all the evidences 
upon them, of a negligent, unwilling, and unthrifty cultiva- 
tion. Here and there-, I had passed a mean and comfort- 
less house ; and once in fifty miles, a decaying, poverty- 
stricken village, with a court house, and a store or two, and 
a great crowd of idlers collected about a tavern door ; but 
without one single sign of industry or improvement. 

I was desirous of seeing Philadelphia ; but that city, so 
near the slave-holding border, I feared might be infected 
with something of the slave-holding spirit ; for the worst 
plagues are the most apt to be contagious. I passed by, 
without passing through it, and hastened on to New York. 
I crossed the noble Hudson, and entered the town. It was 
the first city I had ever seen ; at least, the first one worthy 
to be called a city ; and when I beheld the spacious harbor 
crowded with shipping ; the long lines of warehouses, the 
numerous streets, the splendid shops, and the swarming 
crowds of busy people, I was astonished and delighted with 
the new idea which all this gave me pf the resources of 
human art and industry. I had heard of such things before, 
but to feel, one ought to see. 

I did nothing for several days, but to wander up and 
down the streets, looking, gazing, and examining with an 
a.lmost insatiable curiosity. New York then, was far infe- 
rior, to what it must by this time, have become ; and the 
commercial restrictions which then prevailed must have 
tended to diminish its business and its bustle. Yet to my 
rustic inexperience, the city seemed almost interminable; 


A FUGITIVE. 


223 


and the rattling of the drays and carnages over the pave- 
ments, and the crowds of people in the streets, far ex- 
ceeded all my previous notions of the busy confusion of 
a city. 

I had now been in New York about a week, and was 
standing one forenoon by a triangular grass-plot, near the 
centre of the town, gazing at a fine building of white mar- 
ble, which one of the passers-by told me was the City Hal], 
when suddenly I felt my arm rudely seized. I looked 
round, and with honror and dismay, I found myself in the 
gripe of general Carter, — the man who in South ^Darolina 
had called himself my master ; but who, in a country that 
prided itself in the title of a ‘free State,’ ought no longer to 
have had any claim upon me. 

Let no one be deceived by the false and boastful title 
which the northern States of the American Union have 
thought fit to assume. With what justice can they pre- 
tend to call, themselves free States, after having made a 
bargain with the slave-holders, by which they are bound 
to deliver back again, into the hands of their oppress- 
ors, every miserable fugitive who takes refuge within their 
territory ? The good people of the free States have no 
slaves themselves. Oh no ! Slave-holding they confess, 
is a horrible enormity. They hold no slaves themselves ; 
they only act as bumbailifFs and tipstaves to the slave- 
holders I 

My master, — for so even in the free city of New York 1 
must continue to call him, — had seized me by one arm, and 
a friend of his held me by the other. He called me by 
name ; and in the hurry and confusion of this sudden sur- 
prise, I forgot for a moment, how impolitic it was for me to 
appear to know him. A crowd began to collect about us. 
When they heard that I was •seized as a fugitive slave, 
some of them appeared not a little outraged at the idea that 
a white man should be subject to such an indignity. They 
seemed to think that it was only the black, whom it was 
lawful to kidnap in that way. Such indeed is the untiring 
artfulness of tyranny that it is ever nestling even in the 
bosoms of the free ; and there is not one prejudice, the 
offspring as all prejudices are, of ignorance and self- 


224 


MEMOIRS OF 


conceit, of which it has not well learned how to avail 
Itself. 

Though several of the crowd did not scruple to use very 
strong expressions, they made no attempt to rescue me; and 
I was dragged along towards that very City Hall which I 
had just been admiring. I was carried before the sitting 
magistrate ; some questions were put and answered ; some 
oaths were sworn, and papers written. I had not yet re- 
covered from the first confusion of my seizure ; and this 
array of courts and constables was a horrid sort of danger 
to which I was totally unaccustomed, so that I scarcely 
know what was said or done. But to the best of my rec- 
ollection, the magistrate declined acting on the question ; 
though he consented to gi’ant a warrant for detaining me in 
prison, till I could be taken before some other tribunal. 

The warrant was made out, and I was delivered over to 
an officer. The court-room was filled with the crowd, who 
had followed us from the street. They collected close 
about us, as we left the court-room ; and I could see by 
the expression of their faces, and the words which some of 
them dropped, that they were very well inclined to favor 
my escape. At first, I seemed all submission to the officer ; 
— we had gone however but a very few steps, when with 
a sudden spring I tore myself from his grasp, and darted 
among the crowd, which opened to give me a passage. I 
heard noise, confusion, and shouts behind me ; but in a 
moment, I had cleared the enclosure in which the City 
Hall stood, and crossing one of the streets by which it was 
bounded, I dashed down a narrow and crooked lane. The 
people stared at me as 1 ran, and some shouted, Stop 
thief 1” One or two seemed half inclined to seize me; but 
I turned one short corner, and then another, and finding that 
I was not pursued, I soon dropped into a walk. 

For this escape I return my thanks, not to the laws of 
New York, but to the good will of her citizens. The 
secret bias and selfish interest of the law-makers, often leads 
them wrong ; the unprompted and disinterested impulses of 
the people, are almost always right. It is true that the 
artful practice and cunning instigation of the purchased 
friends and bribed advocates of oppression, joined to the 


A FUGITIVE. 


225 


interest which the thieves and pick-pockets of a great city 
always have in civil tufhult and confusion, may now 
and then succeed in exciting the young, the ignorant, the 
thoughtless, and the depraved, to acts of violence in favor 
of tyranny. But so congenial to the human heart is the 
love of freedom, that it burns not brighter in the souls of 
sages and of heroes, than in the bosoms even of the most 
ignorant and thoughtless, when not quenched by some ex- 
cited prejudice, base passion, or sinister influence. 

In my previous wanderings about the town, I had dis- 
covered the road that led northwardly out of it; and I soon 
turned in that direction, determined to shake off* from my 
feet, the very dust of a city, where I had been so near fall- 
ing back again into the wretched condition of servitude. 

1 travelled all that day, — and at night, the inn-keeper, at 
whose house I lodged, told me that I was in the state of 
Connecticut. I now pursued my flight for several days, 
through a fine hilly and mountainous country, such as I had 
never seen before. The nobleness of the prospect, the 
craggy rocks,, and rugged hills, contrasted finely with the 
excellent cultivation of the valleys, and the universal thrift 
and industry of the inhabitants. Where freedom nerves 
the arm, it is in vain that rocks and hills of granite, oppose 
the labors of the cultivator. Industrious liberty teaches him 
the art to extract comfort, competence, and wealth from a 
soil the most unwilling and ungrateful. 

I knew that Boston was the great sea-port of New Eng- 
land ; and thither I directed my steps, resolved to leave a 
land however otherwise inviting, whose laws would not 
acknowledge me a freeman. As I approached the town, 
the country lost much of its picturesque and hilly grandeur; 
but this was made up for by the greater beauty of its 
smoother and better cultivated fields ; and by the pretty 
dwellings scattered so numerously along the road, that the 
environs of the town seemed almost a continued village. 
The city itself, seated on hills, and seen for a considerable 
distance, gave a noble termination to the prospect. ^ 

I crossed a broad river, by a long bridge, and soon en- 
tered the town ; but I did not stop to examine it. Liberty 
was too precious to be sacrificed to the gratification of an 


226 


MEMOIRS OF 


idle curiosity ; a New York mob had set me free ; a Bos- 
ton mob might perhaps delight in^he opportunity of restoring 
me to servitude. I found my way, as soon as the crooked 
and irregular streets would allow me, to the wharves. — 
Many of the ships were stripped and rotting in the docks ; 
but after some search and inquiry, I found a vessel about to 
sail for Bordeaux. I offered myself as a sailor. The cap- 
tain questioned me, and laughed heartily at my land-lubberly 
air, and rustic ignorance ; but finally he agreed to take me 
at half wages. He advanced me a month’s pay ; and the 
second mate who was a fine young fellow, and who seemed 
to feel for my lonely and helpless ignorance, assisted me in 
buying such clothes as would be necessary for the voyage. 

In a few days, our cargo was completed, and the ship 
was ready for sea. We dropped off from the wharf; 
threaded our course among the numerous islets and head- 
lands of Boston harbor; passed the castle and the light- 
house ; sent off our pilot ; and with all sail set, and a 
smacking breeze, we left the town behind. 

As I stood upon the forecastle, and looked towards the 
land, which soon seemed but a little streak in the horizon, 
and was fast sinking from our sight, I seemed to feel a 
heavy weight drop off me. The chains were gone. I felt 
myself a freeman ; and as I watched the fast receding shore, 
my bosom heaved with a proud scorn, — a mingled feeling 
of safety and disdain. 

“ F arewell, my country 1 ” — such were the thoughts that 
rose upon my mind, and pressed to find an utterance from 
my lips ; — “ And such a country ! A land boasting to be 
the chosen seat of liberty and equal rights, yet holding such 
a portion of her people in hopeless, helpless, miserable 
bondage ! ” 

‘‘Farewell, my country! Much is the gratitude anO 
thanks I owe thee 1 Land of the tyrant and the slave 
Farewell !” 

“And welcome, welcome, ye boundmg billows and 
foamy surges of the ocean 1 Ye are the emblems and the 
children of liberty — I hail ye as my brothers ! — for, at last, 
I too am free 1 — free 1 — free ! ” 


A FUGITIVE. 


227 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

The favorable breezes, with which we had set out, did 
not last long. The weather soon became tempestuous, and 
we were involved in fogs, and driven about by contraiy 
winds. Our labors and hardships were very great ; but 
still I found a sort of pleasure in them. It was for myself 
that I toiled and suffered ; and that thought gave me 
strength and vigor. 

I applied myself with the greatest zeal and good-will to' 
leani the business of my profession. At first, my compan- 
ions laughed at my ignorance and awkwardness, and were 
full of their jokes and tricks upon me. But though rude 
and thoughtless, they were generous and good-natured. In 
the very first week of our voyage, I had a fair fight with 
the bully of the ship. I whipped him soundly; and the 
crew all agreed, that there was something in me. 

I was strong and active; and as I made it a point to 
imitate whatever I saw done by any of the crew, I was 
surprised to find in how short a time I was able to run over 
the rigging, and venture upon the yards. The maze of 
ropes and sea-terms that at first perplexed me, soon grew 
clear. Before we were across the ocean, I could hand, 
reef, and steer with any man on board; and the crew swore 
with one consent, that I was bom to be a sailor. 

' But I was not. satisfied with setting sails and handling 
ropes. I wished to understand the art of navigation. One 
of our crew was a young man of good education, who served 
before the mast, as is common with New Englanders, in 
expectation of presently commanding a ship himself. He 
had his books and his instruments ; and as he had already 
been one or two voyages, he understood pretty well, how 
to apply them, and used to keep a reckoning of the ship’s 
course. This same young sailor, Tom Turner by name, 
was a fine, free-hearted fellow as ever lived ; but he waspf 
a slight make, and his strength was not equal to his spirit. I 
had gained his good-will by standing by him in some of our 
forecastle frolics ; and seeing how anxious I was to leam, 


22H 


MEMOIRS OF 


he undertook to be my instructor. He put his Navigator 
into my hand, and whenever it was my watch below, I was 
constantly poring over it. At first, the whole matter seemed 
mighty mysterious. It was some time before I could see 
into it. But Tom, who had a fluent tongue, lectured and 
explained ; and I listened and studied ; and presently I 
began to understand it. 

All this time, we were heating about in the neighborhood 
of the banks of Newfoundland ; and as we experienced a 
constant succession of storms and contrary winds, we made 
but little progress. We lost a couple of top-sails and sev- 
'eral of our spars ; and had been out some seventy days in 
very rough weather. 

I took it all kindly though ; I was in no hurry to get 
ashore. I had chosen the ocean for my country ; and 
when the winds roared, the rigging rattled, and the timbers 
creaked, I only wrapped my monkey-jacket a little closer, 
braced myself against my sea-chest, and studied my Nav- 
igator ; — that is, if it happened to be my watch below ; 
for when upon deck, I was always ready at the first call, 
and was the first to spring into the rigging. 

At last, the weather moderated, and we made sail for the 
coast of France. We had made the land, and were within 
a few leagues of our harbor, when an armed brig, with the 
British colors flying, bore down upon us, fired a shot a-head, 
and sent a boat’s crew on board. 

In those days, American vessels were quite accustomed 
to such sort of visitations ; and our captain did not seem to ^ 
be much alarmed. But no sooner had the boat’s officer 
reached our deck, than laying his hand upon his sword, he 
told the captain that he was a prisoner. 

It seemed that while we were beating about on the Grand 
Bank, America, at last, had screwed up her courage, and 
had declared war against England. The armed brig was a 
British privateer, and we were her prize. At first we were 
all ordered below ; but presently we were called up again, 
and offered the choice of enlisting on board the privateer, 
or being carried prisoners into England. Near half our 
crew were what the sailors call Dutchmen, that is, people 
firom the North Sea, or the coasts of the Baltic. These 


A FUGITIVE. 


229 


adventurers readily enlisted. Tom Turner was spokesman 
for the Americans ; and when called upon to follow this 
example, he. answered the lieutenant, in a tone so gruff as 
to be little better than a growl, — We’ll see you hanged 
first ! ” 

For myself, I felt no patriotic scruples. I had renounced 
my country ; if indeed that place can be fitly called one’s 
country, which while it gives him birth, cuts him off, by its 
wicked and unjust laws, from every thing that makes life 
worth having. Despite the murrnui’s and hisses of my 
companions, I stepped forward, and put my name to the 
shipping paper. Had they known my history, they would 
not have blamed me. 

After cruising for some time, without success, we returned 
to Liverpool to refit. Our crew was recruited ; and we 
soon put to sea again. Cruising off the coast of France, 
we took several prizes, but none of very great value. We 
now made sail for the West Indies ; and, in the neighbor 
hood of the Bermudas, while close hauled to the wind and 
under easy sail, we discovered a vessel a-head, and gave 
chase. 

The chase slackened sail and waited for us to come up. 
This made us suppose that it might be a man-of-war ; and 
as we were more anxious for plunder than for fighting, we 
put up the helm, and bore away. 

The chase now made sail in pursuit ; and as she proved 
to be much the better sailer, she gained rapidly upon us. 

When we saw that there was no chance of escaping, we 
took in our light canvass, brought the vessel to, ran up the 
British flag, and cleared for action. 

The enemy was an armed and fast-sailing schooner — an 
American privateer, as it proved, about a fair match for the 
brig, in point of size and armament, but in much finer trim, 
and most beautifully worked. She ran down upon us; her 
crew gave three cheers ; and shooting across our bows, she 
gave us a broad-side that did. much execution. She tacked 
and manoeuvred till she gained a favorable position, and 
then poured in her fire with such steadiness, that she 
seemed all a-blaze. Her guns were well shotted, and well 
aimed, and did serious damage. Our captain and first 
20 


230 


MEMOIRS OF 


'lieutenant were soon wounded and disabled. We paid 
back the enemy as well as we could ; but our men dropped 
fast ; and our fire began to slacken. The schooner’s bow- 
sprit got fast in our main rigging, and directly we heard the 
cry for the boarders. We seized our pikes, and prepared 
to receive them ; but a party of the enemy soon got a , foot- 
ing on board the brig ; wounded the only officer on deck ; 
and drove our men frightened and confused towards the 
forecastle. 

I saw our danger ; and the idea of falling again into the 
hands of the tyrants from whom I had escaped, summoned 
back my ebbing courage. I seemed to feel a more than 
human energy spring up within me. I put myself at the 
head of our yielding and dispirited crew, and fought with 
all the frantic valor of a mad hero of romance. I struck 
down two or three of the foremost of the enemy ; and as 
they quailed and shrunk before me, I cheered and encour- 
aged my companions, and called on them to charge. My 
example seemed to inspire them. They rallied at once, 
and rushed forward with new courage. They drove the 
enemy before them ; tumbled some into the sea ; and 
pressed the others back into their own vessel. 

Nor did our success stop here. We boarded in our turn; 
and the decks of the schooner saw as bloody a battle as had 
been fought on those of the brig. The fortune of the fight 
still ran in our favor, and we soon drove the enemy to take 
refuge on the quarter-deck. We called to them to sur- 
render; — ^but their captain waving his bloody sword, sternly 
refused. He encouraged his naen to charge once more, and 
rushed furiously upon us. His cutlass clashed against my 
pike, and flew from his hand. He slipped, and fell upon 
the deck ; and in a moment, my weapon was at his breast. 

He cried for quarter. I thought I knew his face. 

‘‘ Your name ?” 

“ Osborne ! ” 

‘‘ Jonathan Osborne late coipmander of the Two Sallys?” 

The same ! ” 

‘‘ Then die ^ — a wretch like you deserves no mercy ! ” 
and as I spoke I plunged the weapon to his heart, and felt 
thrilling to the very elbow-joint, the pleasurable sense of 
doing justice on a tyrant ! 


A FUGITIVE. 


231 


But justice ought never to be sullied by passion, — and if 
possible, should be unstained with blood. If in my feelings 
at that moment, there was something noble, there was far 
too much of savage fury and passionate revenge. Yet from 
what I then felt, I can well understand the fierce spirit and 
ferocious energy of the slave, who vindicates his liberty at 
the sword’s point, and who looks upon the slaughter of his 
oppressors almost as a debt due to humanity. 

The crew no sooner saw their captain slain, than they 
threw down their arms and cried for quarter. The schoon- 
er was ours, and a finer vessel never sailed the seas. 

Every officer on board the brig was wounded. All con- 
fessed that the capture of the prize was, in a great measure, 
due to me ; and with the approbation of all the crew, I was 
put on board as prize-master. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

We had a short passage to Liverpool. The schooner 
was condemned as a prize, and was bought in by the own- 
ers of the brig. They fitted her out as a privateer ; and 
as they had been informed how large a share I had in her 
capture, they offered me the command of her. I readily 
accepted it ; and having selected an experienced old sailor 
for my first lieutenant, I soon collected a crew, and set sail. 

The cruising ground which I preferred, was the coast of 
America. Off the harbor of Boston, we were so lucky as 
to fall in with, and make prize of a homeward bound East- 
Indiaman, with a very valuable cargo of teas and silks. 
We put a prize-crew on board and sent her off for Liver- 
pool, where she arrived safely, and produced us a very 
handsome sum in prize-money. We now stood to the 
southward ; and for a month or two, we cruised off the 
capes of Virginia. As we kept well in to the coast, we 
often made the land ; and I nevef saw it without feeling a 
strong inclination to send a boat’s crew ashore, and to kid- 
nap from their beds, such of the nearest planters as I could 


232 


MEMOIRS OF 


lay my hands upon. But I did not think it prudent to 
attempt to carry into execution, this piece of experimental 
instruction, of which the Virginians stand so much in need. 

My cruising adventures, chases, and escapes would fill a 
volume ; — ^but they are little to my present purpose. Suf- 
fice it to say, that while the war lasted I kept the seas ; 
and when it ended, most reluctantly I left them. My 
share in the prizes we had taken, rendered me wealthy, — 
at least what the moderation of my wishes made me esteem 
so. But what was to supply the ever varying stimulus 
and excitement, which till now, had sustained me, and pre- 
vented my mind from preying on itself, and poisoning my 
peace with bitter recollections ? The images of my wife, 
my child, and of the friend to whom I owed so much, 
often, on my voyages, flitted mournfully across my mind ; 
but the cry of ‘ Sail ahead’ would call off my thoughts, and 
dissipate my incipient melancholy in the bustle of action. 
But now that I was on shore, homeless, alone, a stranger, with 
' nothing to occupy my mind, — the thoughts of those dear 
sufferers haunted me continually. The very first thing I 
did, was to look up a trusty agent whom I might send in 
search of them. Such an one I found. I gaye him all the 
information which might promote the object of his mission ; 
I allowed him an unlimited credit on my banker ; and stimu- 
lated his zeal by a handsome advance, and the promise of 
a still larger reward, if he succeeded in the object of his 
mission. 

He sailed for America by the first opportunity ; and I 
consoled myself with the hope that his search would be 
successful. In the mean time, to have some occupation 
that might keep off anxious doubts and troublesome anxie- 
ties, I applied myself to study. When a child, I had a fond- 
ness for reading, and an ardent love of knowledge. This 
love of knowledge, the accursed discipline of servitude had 
stifled and kept under, but had not totally extinguished. I 
was astonished to find it still so strong. Having once turned 
my attention that way, my mind drank in all sorts of 
information, as the thirsty earth imbibes the rain. I 
might rather be said to devour books, than to read them. 
I scarcely gave myself time to sleep. No sooner had I fin 


A FUGITIVE. 


233 


ished one, than I hurried to another with restless inquietude. 

I read on without selection or discrimination. It was a long 
time before I learned to compare, to weigh, and to judge. 
It happened to me as it has happened to mankind in general. 
In my anxiety to know, I was ready to take every thing on 
trust ; and I did not stop to distinguish between what was 
fact, and what was fiction. But while I allowed an abun- 
dance of folly and falsehood to be palmed upon me undei 
the sober disguise of truth, I had but little taste for writers 
professedly imaginative. I could not understand why they 
wrote, or what they aimed at. I despised the poets ; but 
voyages, travels, histories and narratives of every sort, I 
devoured with undistinguishing voracity. Time and reflec- 
tion have since enabled me to extract something of truth 
and philosophy from these chaotic acquisitions. 

For a while, my studies had much the same stimulating, 
and exciting effect with my former activity. They raised 
my spirits, and enabled me to bear up under the discour- 
aging advices which I received from America. But they 
palled at last; — and when my agent returned with the 
disastrous information, that all his searches had been una- 
vailing, I found no support under the load of grief that over- 
whelmed me. 

From such information as my agent had been able to 
obtain, it appeared that Mrs Montgomery, Cassy’s mistress, 
had become security to a large amount for that brother of 
hers, by whose advice and agency she managed her aftairs. 
That brother was a planter ; and among the American 
planters, the passion for gambling is next to universal, — 
for it is one of the few excitements by which they are able 
to relieve the listless and wearisome indolence of their use- 
less lives. Mrs Montgomery’s brother was a gambler, and 
an unsuccessful one. Having ruined himself, he began to 
prey upon his sister. Besides embezzling all such money 
of hers as he could lay his hands upon, — and as he had the 
entire management of her affairs, her income was much at his 
disposal, — ^he induced her, under various pretences, to put 
her name to bonds and notes to a large amount. On these 
notes and bonds suits were commenced ; but this, her 
brother, who strove to defer the disclosure of his villanies as 
20 ^ 


234 


MEMOIRS OF 


long as possible, took care to conceal from her ; and the 
first thing she knew of the matter, her entire property was 
seized on execution. 

Among her other chattels, my wife and child were sold, — 
for it is the law and the practice of America to sell women 
and children to pay the debts of a gambler ! 

Gassy and her infant had fallen into the hands of a gen- 
tleman, — such is the American phrase, — who followed the 
lucrative and respectable business of a slave-trader. My 
agent no sooner learned his name, than he set out in pursuit 
of him. But he found that the man had been dead for a 
year or two ; and that he had left no papers behind him, 
from which might be traced the history of his slave-trading 
expeditions. Not yet discouraged, my agent travelled over 
the entire route, which he was told the deceased slave- 
trader had usually followed. He even succeeded in getting 
some trace of the very gang of slaves which had been pur- 
chased at the sale of Mrs Montgomery’s property. He 
tracked them from village to village, till he arrived at Au- 
gusta in the state of Georgia, — but here he lost sight of 
them altogether. That town is or was, one of the great 
marts of the American slave-trade ; and here in all proba- 
bility, the slaves were sold ; but to whom, it was impossible 
to discover. 

Thus baffled in his search, my agent had recourse to 
advertisements in the newspapers, in which the person of 
my wife was particularly described, mention was made of 
the name of her late owner, and a very generous reward 
was offered to any one who would give information where 
she or her child was to be found. These advertisements 
brought him an abundance of communications, but none to 
the purpose ; and after having spent near two years in the 
search, he gave it up, at last, as unavailing. 

Of Thomas he could learn nothing, except that general 
Carter had never retaken him. A man of his figure and 
appearance had been occasionally seen, traversing . the 
woods of that neighborhood, and lurking about the planta- 
tions ; and it seemed not unlikely that he was still alive, 
and the leader of some band of runaways. Such was the 
information which my agent brought me. 


A FUGITIVE. 


235 


While he remained in America, however little encour- 
agement his letters gave, still I could hope. But now, the 
last staff of consolation was plucked from under me. What 
availed it, that I had myself shaken off the chains, which 
were still hanging, and perhaps with a weight so much the 
heavier, to the friend of my heart, to the wife of my bosom, 
to the dear, dear infant, the child of my love ? The curse 
of tyranny indeed is multifold ; — nay, infinite ! — It blasted 
me across the broad Atlantic ; and when I thought of Gassy 
and my boy, I shrunk and trembled as if again the irons 
were upon me, and the bloody lash cracking about my 
head ! — Almighty God ! why hast thou created beings 
capable of so much misery ! 

I recovered slowly from the shock, which at first had 
quite unmanned me. But though I regained some degree 
of composure, it was in vain that I courted any thing like 
enjoyment. A worm was gnawing at my heart which 
would not be appeased. Never was there a bosom more 
inclined than mine to the gentle pleasures of domestic life. 
But I found only torture in the recollection that I was a 
husband and a father. Oh, had my w'ife and my dear boy 
been with me, in what a sweet retirement I could have 
spent my days, ever finding a new relish for present bliss in 
the recollection of ills endured, and miseries escaped ! 

The sense of loneliness which oppressed me, and the 
bitter thoughts and hateful images that were ever crowding 
on my mind, made my life an irksome burden, and drove 
me to seek relief in the excitements of travel. I visited 
every country in Europe, and sought occupation and amuse- 
ment in examining their scheme of society, and studying 
their laws and manners. I traversed Turkey and the 
regions of the East, once the seats of art and opulence, but 
long since ruined by the heavy hand of tyranny, and the 
ever renewed extortions of military pillage. I crossed the 
Persian deserts, and saw in India a new and better civiliza- 
tion slowly rising upon the ruins of the old. 

The interest I felt in the oppressed and unfortunate race, 
with which, upon the mother’s side I am connected, carried 
me again across the ocean. I have climbed the lofty crests of 
the Andes, and wandered among the flowery forests of Brazil 


236 


MEMOIRS OF 


Every where I have seen the hateful empire of aristo- 
cratic usurpation, lording it with a high hand, over the lives, 
the liberty, and the happiness of men. But every where, 
or almost every where, 1 have seen the bondsmen beginning 
to forget the base lore of traditionary subserviency, and 
already feeling the impulses, and lisping in the language of 
freedom. I have seen it every where ; — every where, ex- 
cept in my native America. 

There are slaves in many other countries ; but no where 
else is oppression so heartless and unrelenting. No where 
else, has tyranny ever assumed a shape so fiendish. No 
where else is it, of all the world beside, the open aim of 
the laws, and the professed purpose of the masters, to blot 
out the intellects of half the population, and to extinguish 
at once and forever, both the capacity and the hope of 
freedom. 

In catholic Brazil, — in the Spanish islands, where one 
might expect to find tyranny aggravated by ignorance and 
superstition, the slave is still regarded as a man, and as en- 
titled to something of human sympathies. He may kneel 
at the altar by his master’s side ; and he may hear the 
catholic priest proclaiming boldly from his pulpit, the sacred 
truth that all men are equal. He may find consolation and 
support in the hope of one day becoming a freeman. He 
may purchase his liberty with money ; if barbarously and 
unreasonably punished, he may demand it as his legal right ; 
he may expect it from the gratitude or the generosity of his 
master; or from the conscience-stricken dictates of his 
priest-attended deathbed. When he becomes a freeman, 
he has a freeman’s rights, and enjoys a real and practical 
equality, at the mere mention of which, the prating and 
prejudiced Americans are filled with creeping horror, and 
passionate indignation. 

Slavery, in those countries, by the force of causes now 
in operation, is fast approaching to its end ; and let the Afri- 
can slave-trade be once totally abolished, and before the 
expiration of half a century, there will not a slave be found 
in either Spanish or Portuguese America. 

It is in the United States alone, that country so apt to 
claim a monopoly of freedom, that the spirit of tyranny still 


A FUGITIVE. 


237 


soars boldly triumphant, and disdains even the most distant 
thought of limitation. Here alone, of all the world beside, 
oppression riots unchecked by fear of God, or sympathy 
for man. 

To add the last security to despotism, the American 
slave-holders, while they fiercely refuse to relinquish the 
least tittle of their whip-wielding authority, have deprived 
themselves, by special statute, of the power of emancipa- 
tion, and have thus artfully and industriously closed up the 
last loop-hole, through which Hope might look in upon 
their victims ! 

And thou my child ! — These are the mercies to which 
ihy youth is delivered over ! Perhaps already the spirit of 
manhood is extinguished within thee ; already perhaps the 
frost of servitude has nipped thy budding soul, and left it 
blasted, — worthless. 

No ! — oh no ! — It ought not, must not, cannot, shall 
not be so ! Child ! thou hast yet a father ; — one who 
has not forgotten, and who will not forsake thee. Thy 
need is great — and great shall be his efforts ; — that love is 
little worth which disappointment tires, or danger daunts. 

Yes; — I have resolved it. I will revisit America, and 
through the length and the breadth of the land, I will search 
out my child. I will snatch him from the oppressor’s grasp, 
or perish in the attempt. Should I be recognized and 
seized ? — ^It is not in vain that I have read the history of 
the Romans; I know a way to disappoint the tyrants; 
the guilt be on their heads 1 I cannot be a slave the sec- 
ond time. 


238 


MEMOIRS OF 


CHAPTER XXXVIL 

Having formed the resolve recorded at the close 
of the last chapter, I began immediately to make 
preparations to carry it into execution ; and now 
once more I resume my pen to recount my further 
adventures. 

I had lived for years past a life of constant uneasi- 
ness and anxiety ; haunted, as it were, by the spectres 
of wife and child, pale, weeping, holding out implor- 
ing hands, as if calling to me for aid and deliverance. 
From the moment that I began to prepare for my new 
journey and search, I felt a lightness, an exhilaration, 
a relief, as if a great stone had been plucked out of 
my heart. Now, at last, I had again something to 
live and to strive for ; a shadow perhaps, one so vain 
and unsubstantial, that ever since the failure of my 
former searches, it had seemed idle to attempt to 
pursue it. Yet how much better to pursue even a 
shadow, if one can but prevail upon himself for the 
moment to think it real, than to sit still in hopeless 
and idle vacuity ! Man was made to hope and to act. 

Before leaving England, I took care to provide my- 
self with passports as a British subject, under the 
name of captain Archer Moore, by which I was 
known to my English acquaintances ; and with letters 
also of introduction to the mercantile correspondents 
of those acquaintances in the principal commercial 
towns of America. It was in the character of a trav- 
eller, curious to investigate American society, that I 
revisited the country of my birth. 

As it was from Boston that I had taken my de- 
parture, so I resolved to reland there, and thence to 
retrace my steps to the scenes of my youth, as the- 
first means towards obtaining, if possible, some clew 
to the object of my search. 

It was now more than twenty years since I had 
hastily fled from Boston, a panting fugitive, eager to 





# 







ihimmuiniih 


i^um 




VimBMi 




U/itsn’ffffi 






'/. fmm.'>//m/ji/i/J//ii 




uTtJIi'i iimi U'iiiini. 




UuH 

vm 










c4 

Q 

o 

Q 

^'a 


«b* 


I 


Page 239 







A FUGITIVE. 


239 


find on the boisterous ocean, or somewhere beyond it, 
that freedom which the laws of America denied me 
there. How different from the stern and desperate 
spirit of defiance with which I had seen those shores 
fade from my sight, was the tender sentiment, rising 
almost to hope, with which I again saw spreading 
out before me that same land, emerging from the 
waters ; cruel land of bondage as it had been to me, 
but where yet I might — O kind Heaven that I might! 
— regain a long-lost wife and child! 

As we landed at the wharf and made our way into 
the town, we found it in a state of great confusion. 
A vast crowd, mostly of well-dressed people, was col- 
lected about a building which I afterwards understood 
to be the City Hall ; and just as we approached it, an 
unfortunate person, with a rope about his neck, was 
dragged, apparently from some neighboring house or 
by-way, into the middle of the street. The shout was 
raised. Hang him ! Hang him ! and the gentlemen in 
fine broadcloth, in whose hands he was, seemed quite 
ready to do the bidding of the mob, and to be looking 
round as if for some lamp post or other convenience 
for that purpose. Making our way with great diffi- 
culty to an adjoining street, we found it completely 
choked up with a well-dressed crowd, through which, 
amid jeers and insults, a few women, holding each 
other’s hands, slowly made their way, retreating ap- 
parently from a neighboring building, and for some 
reason or other, evidently objects of very great indig- 
nation. 

On reaching my hotel, called, I think, the Tremont 
House, I anxiously inquired into the occasion of all 
this tumult. The landlord informed me, that it had 
all been caused by the obstinacy of the women whom 
I had seen in the streets. In spite of the remon- 
strances of the citizens, as expressed at a great public 
meeting lately held, in which all the leading merchants 
and lawyers had participated, these obstinate females 
had persisted in meeting to pray for and to plot the 
abolition of slavery ; and what was still more provok- 


240 


MEMOIRS OF 


ing, to listen to the exhortations on that subject of an 
emissary lately sent over from England. It was the 
object of the gentlemanly mob I had seen, composed, 
as he assured me, of men of property and standing, 
to catch this emissary if they could, and to punish 
him in some fitting way for his insolence. 

“ And pray,” said I, “ as you have no slaves in Bos- 
ton, nor, I believe, in this part of the country, why all 
this zeal against these good women ? Being an 
Englishman myself, I must confess to some little in- 
terest in this unfortunate countryman of mine, whom 
your Boston gentry are so anxious to hang. Why 
need your lawyers and merchants play the dog in the 
manger — neither themselves do any thing to abolish 
slavery, nor even allow the women to pray for it?” 
“ As a stranger and an Englishman,” said the land- 
lord, who, though in a great state of excitement 
against the offending females, was evidently a person 
not without good feelings, “these things may seem a 
little strange to you. Yet allow me to suggest a 
word of caution. It would be an unpleasant thing 
for me to have one of my guests seized as a British 
emissary, and made to undergo the scrutiny and per- 
haps insults of a party of volunteer police. Suffice it 
to say, that just at this moment the price of cotton is 
very high, and southern trade a great object. New 
York and Philadelphia have set the example of mob- 
bing the abolitionists, and we should be in danger of 
losing all our southern customers if we did not follow 
the example. Besides, at a public meeting held here 
in Boston, we have just nominated a candidate for 
president; and should we fail in zeal for southern 
interests, how are we to expect to get any southern 
votes ? ” 

After this specimen of Boston, I saw nothing to 
detain me there, and so hastened on to New York. 
It was not without strong emotions that I stood again 
in the Park, on the very spot where General Carter 
had seized and claimed me as a slave. The whole 
scene, with all its incidents, came back to my mind 


A FUGITIVE. 


241 


as fresh as at the moment of the seizure, and I walked 
straight to the court room to which I had been car- 
ried, with as little doubt, hesitation, or uncertainty as 
if it had all happened the day before. There were a 
number of prisoners at the bar, the room was crowded 
with spectators, and a trial or examination of evident 
interest was going on. It soon appeared, that the 
prisoners were charged with having sacked and plun- 
dered a number of houses, whose occupants were sus- 
pected to be tainted with abolitionism, and of having, 
in the same spirit, burnt down an African church. 
The feeling in the court room seemed, however, alto- 
gether in favor of the prisoners, and such, as far as I 
could judge by the newspapers, and the conversations 
which I heard, was the current opinion of the city. 
The prevailing idea seemed to be, that the persons 
really guilty of the riots were those who had suffered 
by them, since it was their pestilent, unpopular opin- 
ions which had stirred up the mob to sack and 
plunder their houses. 

What I saw in New York and Boston served to 
cure me of an error, as to America, sufficiently com- 
mon. I had supposed that in the free states, so 
called, there was really some freedom. I knew in- 
deed, by my own experience, that no asylum was to 
be found there by refugee slaves from the southern 
states ; but I had imagined that the native-born in- 
habitants did enjoy a certain degree of liberty. My 
mistake in this respect was now very apparent. No 
one in New York or Boston was at liberty, at the 
time of my visit, to entertain, or at least publicly to 
express, any detestation of the system of slavery, or 
desire or hope for its speedy abolition, under penalty 
of being visited with the public indignation. Such 
persons indeed would be lucky if they escaped without 
insult to their persons, and destruction of their prop- 
erty. The leading politicians, lawyers, and merchants 
of those cities under whose encouragement and insti- 
gation these outrages were inflicted, seemed to stand 
in no less awe and terror of the anger of the southern 
21 


242 


MEMOIRS OF 


planters than the very slaves who delved the planta- 
tions. Those slaves were held in, check by the whip 
and superior force ; the northern freemen, so called, 
by their own pusillanimity and base love of money. 
In fact, already I began to doubt whether this volun- 
tary slavery of the nominally free — voluntary on the 
part of an overwhelming majority, however a virtuous 
and noble minority might struggle against it — was 
not every way a more wretched and lamentable thing 
than the forced slavery of the laborers of the south. 
Hitherto I had hated a country, from whose prison 
houses I had with such difficulty escaped, and which 
continued to retain, if indeed death had not fortu- 
nately delivered them, those nearest and dearest to 
me. To this hatred I now began to add contempt 
for a mean-spirited population, in which there were 
more voluntary slaves than forced ones. 

From New York I passed on to Philadelphia, and 
thence to Washington. That city had greatly ex-- 
panded since, as one of a chained gang of slaves, I had 
been lodged in the slave prison of Messrs Savage 
Brothers & Company, for shipment to the south. In 
every village and town on my way, I heard the same 
execrations vented against the abolitionists, with ac- 
counts of new riots in which they had suffered, or new 
attempts to subject them to more legal punishments. 
There seemed to be a general conspiracy against free- 
dom of speech and freedom of the press. A' learned 
judge of Massachusetts, after severely denouncing the 
abolitionists as incendiaries, proposed to have them 
indicted at common law as guilty of sedition, if not 
of treason. The accomplished governor of the same 
state said ditto to the judge, and added fresh denunci- 
ations of his own. Almost the only person in New 
England of any note, as I understood, who ventured 
to withstand this popular clamor, or to drop a word 
of apology for those unfortunate abolitionists, was 
Dr Channing, whose writings have made him well 
known wherever the English language is read ; but 
whose refusal, on this occasion, to become, by silence, 


A FUGITIVE. 


243 


a participator in the outrages going on around him, 
had very nearly destroyed, at least for the time, his 
weight and influence at home. 

Washington. I found in the greatest state of excite- 
ment. An unfortunate botanist, who had been gath- 
ering plants in the neighborhood, had, from some 
cause or other, fallen under suspicion, as being an 
abolitionist. His person, room, and trunks had been 
searched. He was found to have in possession a pile 
of newspapers, which was made to serve the purpose 
of an herbarium, in which to dry, press, and preserve 
his plants. This pile of papers, on being carefully 
scrutinized, was found to contain some articles bear- 
ing strongly to abolition sentiments. The whole 
District of Columbia was at once in commotion. 
The unfortunate botanist had been immediately ar- 
rested, on the charge of having in his possession an 
incendiary publication. The alarm had reached a 
very high pitch ; but when it was known that this 
botanical incendiary, this fellow who sought to entice 
the flowers and the herbage into a bloody conspiracy, 
was safely locked up in jail, and all bail refused, the 
city of Washington, especially the southern members 
of Congress, once more breathed freely, as if deliv- 
ered from impending destruction. 

The high degree of excitement, alarm, and terror 
which I found thus prevailing wherever I went, and 
which, according to all accounts, overspread, at this 
moment, the whole United States, was much of a 
puzzle to me. I doubt very much whether the Stamp 
Act itself had caused half so much commotion. 
Even the sacking of Washington by the British could 
hardly have produced more alarm than I found pre- 
vailing in that city and neighborhood. The mere 
fact that a few women of Boston had formed a 
society to pray for the abolition of slavery, or that a 
file of abolition newspapers had found its way to 
the District of Columbia, did not seem sufficient to 
account for so great an alarm. Even the circum- 
stance that a Miss Prudence Crandall, somewhere in 


244 


MEMOIRS OF 


Connecticut, had set up a school to which she ad- 
mitted colored children on terms of equality with her 
white pupils, would not appear in itself so alarming 
a matter, since a number of the most pious and dis- 
tinguished gentlemen of her state and neighborhood, 
including a judge of the United States court, had 
taken an early opportunity to break up her school 
and to send her out of the town. I was assured, in 
fact, that this was not all. This Boston female so- 
ciety and Connecticut school were only small items. 
I was told of a grand plot formed by the abolitionists, 
tending to the most alarming results ; no less than 
the cutting the throats of all the white men through- 
out the south, horrible indignities upon all the white 
women, the ruin of northern trade and commerce, the 
destruction of the south, and the dissolution of the 
Union. It was admitted by some of the more chari- 
table persons with whom I conversed, that possibly 
the abolitionists themselves did not distinctly contem- 
plate all these ends. But they asked for the imme- 
diate a'bolition of slavery — a thing which could end 
in nothing but in the above-mentioned disasters and 
horrors. 

I had a great curiosity to know who these formida- 
ble plotters, objects of so much alarm and terror, 
might be. I was not ignorant of affairs in America, 
but of these terrible abolitionists 1 had never heard ; 
indeed, it would seem as if they had all at once 
started suddenly out of the ground. I learnt, upon 
inquiry, that within a short time past there had 
sprung up, in New England and elsewhere, several 
societies, delegates from which had lately met at New 
York, to the numj)er of twelve men, where they had 
formed a national society. It was the fundamental 
principle of those societies, that to hold men in forced 
bondage was politically a wrong, socially a crime, 
and theologically a sin ; disqualifying those guilty of 
it to be esteemed either good democrats, good men, 
or gpod Christians ; and that, nationally and individ- 
ually, this wrong, crime, and sin ought to be at once 


A FUGITIVE. 


245 


repented of and abandoned. These fanatical persons 
had rapidly increased in numbers. Several wealthy 
merchants, several zealous and eloquent divines, had 
joined them. A good deal of money, as much as 
forty or fifty thousand dollars, had been contributed 
and expended in the dissemination of this startling 
creed, partly by agents and missionaries sent forth 
for that purpose, partly by the publication of news- 
papers, of which there were already two or three 
devoted to the cause, and especially by the printing 
of tracts, setting forth the cruelties and injustice of 
slavery, which had been sent by mail into all parts 
of the country, even into the southern states. 

It was these tracts that liad thrown the whole 
south, planters, politicians, merchants, lawyers, divines 
into an agony of terror, a terror with which even the 
people of the north so far sympathized as to be ready 
to trample under foot, for the extinction of these hor- 
rible innovators, every safeguard of liberty hitherto 
esteemed the most sacred. Free speaking and free 
writing were not to be any longer tolerated. Through- 
out the United States, so far as related to the sub- 
ject of slavery, they were to be suppressed by mob 
violence. 

A few hundred men and women, hitherto mostly 
obscure and unknown, by the holding of a few public 
meetings and the publication of a few tracts, had 
thrown a whole country into commotion. Not John 
the Baptist, when he preached that the kingdom of 
heaven was at hand, had more terribly alarmed king* 
Herod, the scribes and the Pharisees ; and now, as 
then, the murder of the innocents seemed to be 
thought the most feasible way of staving off the 
apprehended catastrophe. 

As there are glens among the mountains wher.e the 
faintest spoken words come back in thunder from a 
thousand echoes, so there are times and seasons when 
human hearts respond in like manner to the faintest 
uttered truth, testifying to the force of it, sometimes, 
21 * • 


246 


MEMOIRS OF 


by loud response of approbation and applause, some- 
times in deafening shouts of indignation, defiance, 
and conscience-stricken dread. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Having reached Richmond on my southern jour- 
ney, I found that city also showing the general alarm. 
A committee of vigilance for the suppression of 
incendiary publications was vigorously at work ; and 
as we drove into the town, a great bonfire was burn- 
ing in the main street, consisting of publications 
lately seized and condemned. One of the books thus 
burnt at the stake was made up, I was told, entirely 
'of extracts from speeches delivered within a few 
years past in the Virginia house of delegates, in 
which the evils of slavery had been pretty strongly 
depicted. But whatever liberty of that sort might 
previously have been allowed, nothing of the kind 
was to be tolerated for the future. 

At Richmond I procured a horse and servant, — for 
in Lower Virginia there were no public conveyances, 
— and set off on a visit to Spring Meadow, my 
birthplace. To satisfy inquiries, — since any traveller, 
a stranger and unknown, was at that time liable to 
suspicion, — I gave out that, on a former visit to the 
country, many years before, I had become acquainted 
with the family at Spring Meadow, to which, indeed, 
I claimed a distant relationship. As I began to ap- 
proach that neighborhood, I found the aspect of des- 
olation and desertion characteristic enough of Vir- 
ginia as I remembered it, and as I now again saw it, 
growing more and more marked. As I rode along 
absorbed in thought, my eyes at length met an object 
which I recognized, being no other than the shop 
and dwelling-house of Mr Jemmy Gordon, situated 


A FUGITIVE. 


247 


at the crotch of the roads, some six or seven miles 
from Spring Meadow. It was a fine, warm, summer 
afternoon, and on a rude bench or settle beside the 
door was sitting, more asleep than awake, an old 
gentleman, who, to the best of my recollection, could 
be no other than Mr Jemmy himself. I accordingly 
addressed him as Mr Gordon, when he roused him- 
self up, did the honors of the house with a grace, 
and bade me walk in and refresh myself with a glass 
of peach brandy. He confessed, however, that I had 
the advantage of him, as he found it impossible to 
recollect my name. I endeavored to remind him of 
a young Mr Moore, an Englishman, who, some 
twenty years before, had passed a week or two at 
Spring Meadow, and more than once had ridden by 
his shop ; and after a good deal of nodding, thinking,* 
and muttering to himself, he declared at last that he 
recollected me perfectly. When I inquired after 
Spring Meadow and its occupants, Mr Gordon shook 
his head mournfully. “ Gone, sir, all gone to rack 
and ruin. Colonel Moore, in his old age, was obliged 
to move off somewhere to Alabama, with such of 
the hands as he could save from the clutch of the 
sheriff ; and that’s the last I’ve heard of him. The 
old plantation has been abandoned these ten years ; 
and the last time I was by there, the roof of the man- 
sion house was all tumbling in.” As I knew there 
was no house nearer than Gordon’s, I begged of him 
to entertain me for a day or two, while I took a turn 
round the old plantation. From my conversation 
with him, I learnt that, with the decrease of the pop- 
ulation in the neighborhood, his trade had fallen off, 
and that he, too, had serious thoughts, old as he was, 
of moving off to Alabama, or somewhere else at the 
south-west. Early the next morning, leaving my 
servant and horse behind me, I set off on foot. But 
I was no sooner out of sight of Jemmy Gordon’s 
house than I directed my steps, not to Spring Mead- 
ow, but to that old deserted plantation on the higher 


248 


MEMOIRS OF 


lands above, to which I had fled with Gassy, and 
where, in the hopefulness and thoughtlessness of 
youth, runaways as we were, we had passed some 
weeks of happy privacy, ending, indeed, in heavy 
tribulation. The great house had now completely 
fallen, and was one undistinguishable heap of ruins ; 
but the little brick dairy, near the run below, was 
very much in the same condition as when we had 
found in it a temporary shelter. As I sat down 
beneath one of the great trees by which it was 
shaded, how all the past came rushing up be- 
fore me ! 

After an hour or two of reverie, I made my way 
through the woods to Spring Meadow, where I 
found another similar scene of desolation. The gar- 
den, where I had spent so many thoughtless hours in 
childish sports with master James, was now over- 
grown with persimmons, which choked and over- 
shadowed the few remaining shrubberies. Yet the 
old garden walks might be distinctly traced in sev- 
eral places, and there were considerable remnants of 
an old summer house, where we had sat hour after 
hour, hid away from his brother William, and studying 
master. James’s lessons together. Adjoining the gar- 
den was the family burying-ground, and over master 
James’s grave I dropped a tear. My mother’s grave 
I had to seek in another part of the plantation. 
What stranger, lighting on the spot, could have now 
distinguished, from any difference in the grass and 
trees that waved above them, or in the wild aspect 
around of nature regaining her dominion, in which 
spot the master rested, and in which the slave ? 
These silent graves, already half obliterated, no less 
than the fast-mouldering ruins of what had once 
been the seat of opulence and plenty, seemed plainly 
to testify, that not by such means were families to be 
perpetuated, prosperous communities to be founded, 
or permanent triumphs over nature secured. * 


A FUGITIVE. 


249 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Returning to Richmond, I found that consequen- 
tial little town still in a state of the 'greatest alarm. 
The whole ordinary course of law had been set aside, 
and a self-constituted committee of vigilance as- 
suming to dictate to the citizens what newspapers 
they should be allowed to receive, and what books 
to read, or to have in their houses. At such a mo- 
ment, it was very easy to fall under suspicion ; and 
unfortunately, just before setting out on my late ex- 
cursion, I had drawn attention to myself at the din- 
ner table, by an unlucky jest at the fright into which 
the great state of Virginia had been thrown by a few 
picture books ; for it was the cuts with which some 
of the abolition tracts were illustrated which seemed 
to inspire the greatest alarm. My coming back re- 
doubled their suspicions. I had hardly had time to 
wash and dress myself, when I was waited upon by 
three grave-looking gentlemen, among the most re- 
spectable citizens of the town, as the landlord assured 
mej and in terms polite, but very peremptory, they 
required me to make my immediate appearance 
before the vigilance committee, then sitting - in the 
town hall. 

I had brought letters to a merchant of the place, 
whom I found, like most of the merchants in the 
southern towns, to be a northern man by birth, and 
from whom, on the presentation of my letters on 
my first arrival, I had received the usual attentions. 
With some difficulty, I obtained leave from the 
bailiffs of the vigilance committee to send for this 
gentleman, and also for another, whom I had met at 
his house at dinner, and whom I understood to be a 
leading lawyer. The merchant soon sent me an 
apology for not coming. His wife had suddenly 
been seized with an alarming sickness, which made 
it impossible for him to leave her. But when I read 


250 


MEMOIRS OF 


this note to the three volunteer bailiffs, who still re- 
mained with me, regaling themselves with mint 
juleps at my expense, they heard it with an incred- 
ulous smile ; and one of them exclaimed, “ What 
more could you expect of the sneaking Yankee ? 
He means to keep himself out of harm’s way, at all 
events.” 

The lawyer sooh made his appearance, and having 
accepted a fee, entered with great apparent, and I 
dare say real, zeal into my case. I begged to know 
whether those who had summoned me before them 
possessed any legal authority, and whether I was 
bound to pay any attention to their summons. I 
had supposed, I said, that the state of Virginia was 
a country of laws, and that I could only be held to 
answer to some charge sworn against me before some 
magistrate. Was I obliged to submit to a personal 
examination before this vigilance committee ? To 
this my friendly lawyer replied, that in the present 
state of alarm, the law was suspended. The neces- 
sity of self-preservation rose above all law ; and in 
the imminent danger to which the whole southern 
states were exposed, — the breaking out of a general 
slave insurrection, — everything must be sacrificed to 
the safety of the coiftmunity. The throats of the 
white inhabitants, the purity of their wives and 
daughters, were at risk. Two Yankee schpolmas- 
ters had been warned out of the town the day before, 
and nothing but the earnest efforts of himself and 
a few others, and their own prudence in not attempt- 
ing the slightest resistance to this mandate, had 
saved them from the indignity, perhaps, of a public 
flogging, and a coat of tar and feathers. As it was, 
they had been obliged to fly because they had not 
known how to hold their foolish Yankee tongues, — 
this perhaps was a sly hit at my own imprudent 
freedom of speech, — the chief witness and informant 
against them being a fellow whom one of them had 
sued the day before, to recover payment for several 
quarters’ schooling for his children, and who, so the 


A FUGITIVE. 


251 


lawyer seemed to intimate, had taken this compen- 
dious method of squaring the account. It would be 
safest for me, in the present excited state of the pub- 
lic mind, if I wished to save myself from disagree- 
able personal indignities, to pay the greatest defer- 
ence to the committee and their orders ; and he would 
do his best to get me oif as easily as possible. 

Having found, upon inquiry, that the English con- 
sul was absent from the city, I hastened with my 
lawyer to wait upon the vigilance committee, and 
the more so, as a second detachment of volunteer 
bailiffs had already arrived, rather ominously backed 
by a mob, collected before the door of the hotel, with 
orders to bring me by force, if I delayed any longer. 
Those who had me in charge did their best to pro- 
tect me, yet I did not entirely escape without insults 
from the crowd. 

Having arrived in the august presence of the com- 
mittee, I found myself obliged to submit to a very 
stringent examination on the part of the chairman, a 
sharp-nosed, gray-eyed gentleman, and in spectacles, 
deacon, I was told, of a Presbyterian church. He 
inquired as to my name, birthplace, occupation, and 
object in visiting the country ; which I stated to be, 
to observe its manners and customs, and in fact, as 
I added, I had found them very singular indeed, and 
well worthy of a traveller’s curiosity. I might, how- 
ever, as ‘well have kept my observations to myself, 
for this sally brought a scowl blacker than before 
across the brows of the very solemn-looking commit- 
tee, and a reproving shake of the head and glance of 
the eye from my friendly lawyer, who sat in one cor- 
ner, but' who was not allowed to take any part in the 
proceedings. 

In the course of my answers, I had referred to my 
letter of introduction brought to the merchant, to 
whom a message was immediately sent, to come 
before the committee, and to bring that letter with 
him. His wife must have recruited very suddenly, 
for in a surprisingly short time the merchant made 


252 


MEMOIRS OF 


his appearance, with the letter in his hand ; the sweat 
running down his face, and the poor man trembling 
in an agony of terror, that went far to raise grave 
suspicions against both him and me. The letter 
happened to be from Tappan, Wentworth, & Co., 
well-known bankers, of Liverpool. No sooner had 
the chairman read the signature, than his face, 
though quite long and serious enough before, un- 
derwent a very sudden elongation; his eyebrows 
rising up like those of a man who had just seen a 
ghost, or something else very terrible- — “Tappan! 
Tappan ! ” he repeated to himself several times, in a 
sharp, quick, but snivelling tone — “Tappan! Tap- 
pan ! there we have it ; a bloody emissary, no doubt ! 
That, you know,” he continued, turning to his col- 
leagues, “ is the name of the New York silk mer- 
chant, who is one of the leaders in this nefarious 
conspiracy, and who has given ■ I don’t know how 
many thousand dollars to circulate these horrid in- 
cendiary tracts. How I wish I had the rascal here 
now ! I should rejoice to be one to help put a rope 
round his neck. Ah, Mr Doeface,” he added, with 
an ominous nod to the poor trembling merchant to 
whom the letter was addressed, and a look in which 
indignation and commiseration were about equally 
mingled — “ah, Mr Doeface, I am very sorry to find 
that you have any such correspondents-.” 

Exclamations, threats, and oaths resounded from all 
sides of the crowded hall, and before either Mr Doe- 
face, who seemed indeed past speaking, or I, could get 
in a word, messengers were despatched to search the 
merchant’s house from garref to cellar, and his ware- 
houses also, in hopes of discovering some of the 
obnoxious tracts, while others were deputed to 
break open and examine my trunks ; which break- 
ing open, however, I prevented by handing out 
my keys. Meanwhile, with very great difficulty, I 
brought the honorable chairman and his colleagues 
to perceive that the letter which had produced so 
great a commotion was dated, not at New York, 


A FUGITIVE. 


253 


but at Liverpool ; and as I happened to have in my 
pocket book two or three other letters of credit from 
the same firm to merchants in Charleston and New 
Orleans, I at length succeeded in making it under-' 
stood, that my letter of introduction was not, after all, 
such palpable evidence of treason and sedition as had, 
at first, been supposed. 

Luckily, my friend, the Yankee merchant, had but 
very little of a literary turn. After a thorough search 
of his premises, the committee of inspection were able 
to discover nothing except a number of picture books 
belonging to his children, and some twenty or thirty 
pamphlets, all of which were brought in for the crit- 
ical inspection of the vigilance committee. At the 
sight of the picture books, the committee grew very 
solemn, and the chairman cast another look over the 
top of his spectacles, half of pity and half of reproach, 
at the Yankee merchant, whose teeth began to chat- 
ter worse than ever, and who rolled up the whites of 
his great eyes in as perfect an agony as if he had just 
been caught in the very act of horse stealing or for- 
gery. But after a solemn and serious inspection, dur- 
ing which the whole assembled multitude held their 
breath, clinched their fists, set their teeth, and looked 
daggers at the suspected offender, nothing worse 
appeared than Jack the Giant Killer and Little Bed 
Biding Hood. One very fierce-looking old gentleman 
on the committee, with puffing cheeks and bloodshot 
eyes, apparently not very familiar with juvenile liter- 
ature, and a little the worse for liquor, thought there 
was something rather murderous in these represen- 
tations, especially as the pictures were pretty highly 
colored. But his colleagues assured him that these 
were very ancient books, which had been long in cir- 
culation, and though, perhaps, considered in them- 
selves, like the Declaration of Independence, the His- 
tory of Moses and the Deliverance of the Israelites, as 
recorded in the Bible, or the Virginia Bill of Bights, 
they might seem to have rather a malign aspect, yet 
they could not be set down as belonging to that 
22 


254 


MEMOIRS OF 


class of incendi^iry or abolition publications, the 
having which in one’s possession would be proof of 
conspiracy. 

With myself it came near going considerably 
worse. As ill luck would have it, the only book that 
I happened to have in my trunk was a volume of 
Sterne’s Sentimental Journey ; and that unlucky vol- 
ume happened to have for a frontispiece a prisoner 
chained in a dungeon, and underneath, by way of 
motto, Sterne’s celebrated exclamation, “Disguise 
thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, still thou art a bit- 
ter draught, and though thousands have been made 
to drink thee, none the less bitter on that account!” 

The production of this book, with this horrible fron- 
tispiece to it, and incendiary motto, evidently produced 
a profound sensation. The great eyes of my friend, 
the Yankee merchant, dilated almost to saucers at 
the sight of it. . But, fortunately, several of the 
members of the committee were pretty well read in 
light literature, and were able to assure the assem- 
bled multitude that Lawrence Sterne was no aboli- 
tionist. It was not difficult to perceive, that two or 
three of the gentlemen on the committee, though it is 
by no means easy to rise above the contagion of pop- 
ular passion, however absurd, were perfectly aware 
of the ridiculous light in which themselves and the 
community to which they belonged must appear in 
my eyes. But they did not dare to suggest any such 
idea, lest they should be suspected of lack of sensi- 
bility to the public danger, or a disposition to shield 
abolitionists. Indeed, it was quite enough to do 
away any tendency to laugh — the thought that be- 
fore a less well-read committee of vigilance, as might 
easily happen in the rural districts, the having in a 
man’s trunk a stray volume with an unfortunate fron- 
tispiece, might subject him to summary punishment as 
a plotter of rebellion and murder. 

Finally, after a most thorough, searching, and de- 
liberate examination, conducted, as the Richmond 
newspapers of the next day had it, “ with the greatest 


A FUGITIVE. 


255 


decorum, and* with the strictest regard to every prin- 
ciple of equity,” the evidence against me resolved 
itself into the unlucky witticism about the picture 
books, in which I had indulged at the hotel dinner 
table; a piece of personal disrespect for the com- 
monwealth of Virginia and the institution of slavery, 
which it was impossible for me to deny, and which 
was circumstantially testified to by no less than seven 
witnesses. 

The committee, however, wishing, as they said, to 
preserve, as far as possible, the ancient reputation of 
Virginia for hospitality, in consideration that I was 
a stranger and a foreigner, saw fit to dismiss me un- 
punished ; not, however, without a long exhortation 
half way between a scolding and a sermon, delivered 
in a rasping nasal tone, by the sharp-nosed, gray- 
eyed chairman, in which he dwelt with great unction, 
even with tears in his eyes, upon the sin and danger 
of jesting about sacred things ; nor did he wind up 
without a hint, that, all things considered, I might as 
well leave Richmond at my earliest convenience. 


CHAPTER XL. 

I LOST not a moment in profiting by the kind advice 
of my sermonizing friend, the chairman ; and by the 
assistance of the lawyer, who seemed really anxious 
for my safety, I evaded the mob collected in the street, 
who appeared inclined to put me on trial a second 
time, and as speedily as possible obtained a convey- 
ance out of town, there to wait the approach of the 
great southern mail stage coach, my legal friend 
promising to see that my 'baggage was put on at Rich- 
mond. Two or three days’ ride in this conveyance, 
in which I was the only passenger, brought me to the 
little village, a court house, jail and tavern, in which 
last was the post office, the nearest point on the route 


256 


MEMOIRS OF 


to Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, which I intended 
next to visit. As the coach, which was little better 
than a sort of lumber wagon, drove up, there were col- 
lected about the tavern door a dozen or two of those 
idlers, several of them rather out at the elbows, and 
more than half of them decidedly tipsy, commonly to 
be found on that route, about the doors of such places. 
They were engaged in discussing, with most vehe- 
ment gesticulations, what then seemed to be the only 
topic wherever I went — the wicked plot and conspir- 
acy of the bloodthirsty abolitionists. One of them 
held in his hands a little tract, which had come di- 
rected to him through the post office, entitled, “ Hu- 
man Rights,” the sight of which seemed to have upon 
him and his companions much the effect of the bite 
of a mad dog ; for they were all more or less foaming 
at the mouth, and all seemed exceedingly anxious, if 
not to bite, at least to hang somebody. The man with 
the tract, as I was told, was a candidate for congress 
in that district. He seemed to suspect a little that 
the sending him this tract on human rights was a con- 
trivance to damage him with the people, on the part 
of his rival, who had a brother living in New York ; 
but the prevailing opinion appeared to be, that the tract 
was a bona fide abolition emissary, a sort of bomb- 
shell stuffed with sedition and murder, which might at 
any time explode ; and though some wished to pre- 
serve it as a palpable proof of the reality of the abo- 
lition conspiracy, the prevailing opinion seemed to 
be, that it would be safest to burn it forthwith. Ac- 
cordingly, amid oaths and execrations, and wishes 
that a dozen or two of the abolitionists were tied 
to it, it was solemnly deposited in the kitchen fire. 
Their hand thus in, the company, headed by the 
would-be member of congress, beset the coach, and 
insisted upon searching the mail bags for the detec- 
tion of like dangerous missives. Nor could the driver 
protect his charge in any other way than by the 
most positive asseverations that the mail bags from 
the north had undergone a thorough search and 


A FUGITIVE. 


257 


purgation at Richmond. I had taken care to secure 
the good graces of this driver, who was a very shrewd 
fellow, a Yankee from Maine, and who gave me such 
an excellent character to the landlord, as, together 
with a little prudent dissimulation on my part, se- 
cured me from the danger of fresh annoyances. The 
old story of having, during a former tour some twenty 
years before, enjoyed the hospitality of Carleton Hall 
and Poplar Grove, served as an excuse for wishing to 
visit those plant^-tions, and for inquiring about their 
former and present inhabitants. Of their former pos- 
sessors, Mr Carleton and Mrs Montgomery, I was 
able to learn but little. Mr Carleton had adopted the 
common resource of emigration to the south-west. 
The Montgomerys were gone, it was said, to Charles- 
ton, but nobody knew any thing more of them. Both 
plantations, I was told, belonged at present to a Mr 
Mason, a very odd sort of a gentleman, who would, 
no doubt, be very glad to see me. 

I slept that night at the tavern, or rather tried to 
sleep, but, disturbed as I was by the singing of mos- 
quitoes, the barking of dogs, and what was infinitely 
worse, the sound of the handmills with which the 
slaves of the establishment were busy all night in pre- 
paring their next day’s allowance of meal, with but 
little success. No sooner did I sink into a doze, 
than that well-remembered sound mingled with my 
dreams, and I began to imagine it was myself who 
was grinding. 

Rising in the morning unrefreshed, I proceeded on 
horseback to Carleton Hall. Having introduced my- 
self as once the guest of the former proprietor, I re- 
ceived, according to the hospitable custom of the 
south, where the leisure of the planters makes them al- 
ways eager for company, a very cordial and friendly 
welcome. Mr Mason I found to be a gentleman, in 
manners, education, and sentiment, such as would do 
honor to any part of the world. In the course of the 
week that I remained his guest, I learnt from him that 
his father, a man of natural energy, who had raised 
22 * 


258 


MEMOIRS OF 


himself from a humble position, after acting many 
years as an overseer had become the purchaser of 
Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, when those two 
plantations had passed out of the hands of their for- 
mer proprietors. Having enjoyed very small advan- 
tages himself, being, in fact, hardly able to write his 
name, he had been the more anxious to educate his 
son, whom he had sent to a northern college, and af- 
terwards to travel in Europe. Unlike a large number 
of the young men of the south, sent to the north for 
their education, the young Mason had made a good 
use of his opportunities ; and four or five years before 
he had returned home, just in time to receive, under 
the will of his dying father, possession of the estates, 
and the guardianship of two young, sisters, — and 
charming little girls they were, — joint heirs with 
himself of the plantations and the people. 

The plantation at Carleton Hall, instead of being 
worn out and just ready to be deserted, like too many 
others in that neighborhood, I found to be in a much 
better state of cultivation than when I had formerly 
known it. The buildings were all in good repair, and 
the negro houses were so well clustered, and so neat 
and tidy, with little gardens about them, as, instead 
of an unsightly nuisance, as is usually the case, to be 
real ornaments to the landscape. 

Under the profound dissimulation, which slaves 
know so well how to assume in all its varieties, from 
stupid indifference to appearances of the strongest 
emotion, whether joyful or sorrowful, it is often ex- 
tremely difficult to get at their real feelings. Yet 
there was something hardly to be mistaken in the 
broad, good-natured smile with which, wherever we 
went, Mr Mason’s friendly greeting was looked up for 
and returned, by young and old, man and maiden, 
and especially in the joyous clamor with which the 
children of the plantation gathered about him. We 
went to see them in the school-room, as he called it, 
where they were all assembled every day, not to be 
taught any thing, but to be kept out of mischief, under 


A FUGITIVE. 


259 


the care of a venerable, white-haired old woman, bent 
half double with age, whom they called “ Granny;” 
and a merry sight of it they were, from infants of 
three or four months, in the arms of little nurses just 
big enough to carry them, to children of twelve or four- 
teen, all cleanly dressed, — a thing I had never seen 
before on a plantation, — the larger ones having the 
range of an ample play-ground about the nominal 
school-house, where they amused themselves with 
sports and monkey tricks innumerable. The only thing 
that Granny undertook to teach was good manners, 
upon which subject her lectures, at least during the 
presence of visitors, were very incessant and sufficient- 
ly amusing. The title of “ Granny ” was not in her 
case merely nominal, so Mr Mason told me. She was, ^ 
in fact, grandmother, or great-grandmother, or great- 
great-grandmother of nearly every one of the chil- 
dren about her. Mr Mason himself addressed her by 
the title of aunt Dolly, with almost as much kindness 
and affection as if she had been his own grandmother 
— treatment on his part to which he said she was 
well entitled, as being in fact the founder and source 
of the fortunes of the family. His father’s first earn- 
ings had been invested, some fifty years before, in the 
purchase of aunt Dolly, then a young woman with 
three or four children. She afterwards had others, 
twelve in all, and all females. The daughters had 
been scarcely less fruitful than the mother ; and it 
was from this source that the whole plantation, as 
well as that at Poplar Grove, had been stocked. In 
fact, his father, who was a man of some scruples, had 
never sold a servant in his life, and never bought one 
except Aunt Dolly, at her own special request, and a 
number of likely men as husbands for his super- 
abundant females. 

The system of management upon Mr Mason’s 
plantation, inherited, as he told me, in part from his 
father, but improved by himself, I found to be totally 
different from any thing I had ever seen elsewhere, 
except that it reminded me, in several points, of the 


260 


MEMOIRS OF 


discipline of major Thornton, to whom I had rny- 
self formerly belonged. Mr Mason was, like major 
Thornton, his own overseer, though he employed an 
assistant under him for each of the plantations, men, 
like himself, of intelligence, education, and humanity, 
but whom, he said, it had cost him great searching 
to find, and great labor to train. Every thing went 
on with the regularity of clockwork. The allow- 
ances to the people, both of food and clothing, were 
generous, and the tasks by which every thing was 
done, moderate. The whip was only used on very 
rare occasions, and that rather for the punishment of 
the misdemeanors which the people committed against 
each other, than for those against the master; for 
, said Mr Mason, “I am not only plantation manager, 
but judge and magistrate to settle all our internal 
disputes, and, in fact, to tell the truth, the very hard- 
est worked slave in the whole establishment. How 
many planters in North Carolina do you suppose 
would accept my property on condition of managing 
it as I do ? ” The great stimulus employed to make 
the people work was emulation. They were divided 
into eight or ten classes, according to their capacity 
and aptitude for labor, individuals being promoted or 
degraded according to their merits, and each class, 
according to the amount of labor it performed, being 
distinguished by certain privileges and badges of 
honor. The lowest class of all was called the “ lazy 
class,” into which there was a great horror of falling, 
except on the part of two or three habitual sluggards 
who were always in it, and who served as standing 
butts for all the wit of the plantation. At the close 
of every harvest, there was a grand fancy ball, at 
which the people were allowed precedence according 
to their merits. The best of them had the first choice 
of characters, the range of which first choice was, 
however, rather limited, lying between General Wash- 
ington in sword and cocked hat, and old Master 
Mason, my host’s father, till lately General Jackson, 
since he was chosen president, had come in as a rival. 


A FUGITIVE. 


261 


All the vest had the choice of characters, each accord- 
ing to his place on the list of merit; and as Mr Ma- 
son allowed a certain moderate compensation for 
extra labor beyond the regular task, the buying of 
finery to figure at this fancy ball proved a great stim- 
ulus to many, the women especially. Some of 
the people were excellent mimics. Every doctor, 
minister, and overseer in the neighborhood got taken 
off; and on the whole, Mr Mason said, the acting 
was often superior to such as he had seen a good deal 
applauded on the New York and London boards. 
The idea itself he had picked up from a West India 
planter with whom he had become acquainted in 
England. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

Two or three days after my arrival at Carleton 
Hall, Mr Mason and myself, who had become by this 
time excellent friends, rode to visit Poplar Grove. 
Of the old servant’s quarter, the only building stand- 
ing was one quite near the great house, a neat little 
cottage, which Mrs Montgomery had caused to be 
built on purpose for me and Gassy, and in which our 
child had been born. The honeysuckle which we 
had planted in commemoration of that event, and 
which she had twined with so much care over the 
door, was still growing there, though exhibiting many 
signs of age — old, bent, and gnarled, and the ends of 
the twigs beginning to die. The little garden around 
was still neatly kept, and I thought I recognized some 
of the very rose bushes which she and I had planted. 
Little did Mr Mason imagine my feelings as we rode 
together by that cottage door ! O, how I longed to 
be alone and unobserved ! It was, indeed, with the 
greatest difficulty that I prevented myself from spring- 
ing from my saddle and rushing into the house. It 
seemed to me almost as if I should find jCassy there 
and the child ! 


262 


MEMOIRS OF 


I learnt from conversation with Mr Mason, that 
the pecuniary results of his system of management 
were not less satisfactory than the moral ones. Owing 
to fiis father’s good nature in indorsing the paper of 
a friend, the plantations, as he inherited them, had 
been burdened by a heavy mortgage, which was now 
nearly paid off. I did not fail to congratulate this 
worthy gentleman on having approached so near to 
the solution of a problem which all my observation 
and experience had made me believe insoluble — 
the making plantation life a tolerable condition of 
existence, as well for the slaves as for the free. But, 
though evidently well pleased with my Compliments, 
Mr Mason shook his head. “ I shan’t deny, sir,” he 
said, “ that I feel a certain pleasure from the approval, 
by a man of your experience and discernment,. of my 
poor efforts to do the best I can in the very trying 
and embarrassing position in which Providence has 
placed me ; but, after all, sir, make the very best of 
it, this slavery is a damnable business for whites and 
blacks, and all of us together.” Though we had 
talked before with a good deal of freedom, and though 
I had given Mr Mason an account of my experiences 
at Richmond with a pretty free expression of my own 
feelings and opinions, he had all along observed a 
certain uneasy reserve, as if doubting if it would be 
safe to speak out. Willing enough to draw him on, 
I replied, “ Certainly, sir, if all masters were like you, 
slavery would be a very different thing from what it 
is, and vastly more tolerable.” “ Ay,” said he, with a 
significant smile, “ if all masters were like me, slavery 
would cease to exist to-morrow.” “ What,” I asked, 
“are you an abolitionist?” I almost regretted the 
question the moment I had put it, for I at once per- 
ceived that even his sound head and heart were not 
entirely proof against a word so terrible to every 
southern ear — a sort of synonyme, in fact, for rape 
and throat-cutting. He began in a hesitating man- 
ner to disavow that character, but soon gave his an- 
swer a different turn. “ No more an abolitionist,” he 


A FUGITIVE. 


268 


said, “than Washington, or Patrick Henry. This 
is an evil, cursed system, beyond the reach of individ- 
ual effort, and only to be remedied by public action. 
The worst evils, I am satisfied, that could possibly 
arise from setting all the slaves free to-morrow, would 
not begin to approach the amount of evil suffered, 
whether by blacks or whites, in every ten years that 
slavery continues to exist.” “ What,” I asked, “would 
it be safe to set so many ignorant slaves free at once, 
and without any preparation for it? The general 
opinion among slaveholders seems to be that, if so 
freed, the slaves would begin by cutting the throats 
and taking possession of the wives and daughters of 
their masters, and end by dying of starvation for 
want of somebody to provide for them. You must 
begin, they say, by preparing them for freedom.” 
“ It is hardly worth while,” answered Mr Mason, “ to 
speculate upon a contingency so improbable, just now, 
as the setting free of all the slaves by the sponta- 
neous act of their owners. A deal of preparation, I 
fear, will be wanting before we can come to that — 
preparation not so much, however, on the part of the 
slaves as on that of the masters. The slaves, in my 
opinion, are quite well enough prepared for freedom 
already ; about as much so as slaves ever will be or 
can be. lYom my observations at home and abroad, 
they are decidedly more intelligent, and a good deal 
more kind-hearted and manageable, than either the 
Irish or the English peasantry. The difficulty, and 
the only difficulty, about their working for wages, is 
precisely the same which has defeated two or three 
attempts that I have known to carry on plantations by 
free laborers imported from Europe. While we have 
so much more land than inhabitants, as we still do in 
most of the southern states, the negroes would prefer 
to scatter, and, instead of working for wages, to set 
up, like our present poorer class of free whites, each 
man a little plantation of his own. That is what 
has happened in Hayti. The sugar plantations 
which require the employment of numerous laborers 


264 


MKMOIRS OF 


have been in a great measure abandoned, while the 
coffee cultivation, which each cottager can carry on 
for himself, still flourishes, and forms the staple of the 
island.” 

“ If that is all,” I answered, “ the slaves themselves 
would not seem to be in any great danger of starv- 
ing, however it might be with some of their late 
masters. But pray, sir, what do you think of the 
throat-cutting, and other enormities ? ” “ These,” he 

replied, “ are bugbears inherited from our grand- 
mothers. The wild savages, many of them prisoners 
of war, formerly imported from Africa, when they 
rose in insurrection, as they sometimes did, naturally 
enough began, if they could, by cutting their masters’ 
throats. An insurrection, even nowadays, as it is 
sure to be met by bullets, bowie knives, hangings and 
burnings, is likely enough, while it lasts, to be prose- 
cuted by the same methods. The negro is an imita- 
tive creature, and easily adopts the example which 
his master sets. But to suppose that our slaves, if 
voluntarily set free, would take to robbing and mur- 
dering their white neighbors, instead of bestirring 
themselves like other poor folks — like the Irish emi- 
grants, for instance, landed on our shores in no respect 
their superiors, except in freedom — to earn an honest 
living by their labor, for themselves and their children, 
seems to me quite ridiculous. It is paying a very 
poor cotnpliment, indeed, to the courage and supe- 
riority of us whites, to doubt whether we, superior as 
well in numbers as in every thing else, could not in- 
spire awe enough to maintain our natural position at 
the head of the community, and to keep these poor 
people in order without making slaves of them.” 

“ But suppose,” said I, “ the emancipated slaves 
should prove as harmless as you imagine. Suppose 
they should actually labor enough to save themselves 
from starvation ; yet, scattered upon little patches of 
ground, would they not live in idleness and pover- 
ty, leaving the present productive plantations aban- 
doned, and reducing the whole south to a squalid 


A FUGITIVE. 


265 


misery, such as we see in the present villages of free 
blacks ? ” 

“ The present free colored people in the United 
States,” said Mr Mason, “ are a poor, persecuted 
race ; placed, especially in the southern states, under 
very anomalous circumstances ; and yet, even among 
them, I have known some very deserving persons. 
It would, however, be more reasonable to deduce 
the position which our supposed emancipated slaves 
would be likely to assume, from that at present oc- 
cupied by the mass of our white people who do not 
own slaves. I must confess, there is not much to 
boast of in the condition of the poor white people 
throughout the southern states. It is freedom which 
makes the chief difference between the slaves and 
those poor whites. Here in North Carolina, a very 
great number of them can neither read nor write, nor 
tell their own age ; nor are they, in any intellect- 
ual or moral respect, (except that consciousness of 
being their own masters which goes so far towards 
making a man,) superior to the generality of the 
plantation slaves. Yet however there may be some, 
among our rich planters, who would think it a very 
good thing to reduce these poor white men to slavery, 
he would be a bold fellow, indeed, who would dare to 
propose, much more to undertake it. That, indeed, 
would seem scarcely necessary, for already the oper- 
ation of our system is terribly depressing to them, 
as well as to the slaves. It hangs like a millstone 
about their necks, since it makes almost every kind 
of manual labor disgraceful ; and apart from manual 
labor, how few other chances have the poor to ac- 
quire that capital necessary to give them a start in 
the world ! And yet, with all these drawbacks and 
impediments, it is still this class of the poor free 
whites which forms the substratum and basis of 
our southern civilization, such as it is. My father 
began life a poor man. He has often told me that 
he came the first time to Carleton Hall barefooted, 
not being, in fact, the owner of a pair of shoes. The 
23 


266 


MEMOIRS OF 


fathers or grandfathers of almost all my neighbors 
were poor men also. It is a common saying that a 
plantation seldom remains in the same faniily beyond 
the third generation. It is out of this class of the 
poor that the new proprietors spring up ; and it is 
into this class of the poor that the families of the 
former proprietors subside.. But consider how this 
class of the poor is sunk, deteriorated, and weighed 
down by slavery I No wonder that in wealth, indus- 
try, intelligence, every thing that makes a community 
respectable, we are so far behind the free states. Not 
only have our poor free people vastly less chance to 
rise than the people of the same class at the north, 
but by holding the bulk of our laborers in perpetual 
slavery, we cut off the very main source whence fresh 
energy and strength ought to flow in upon us. Here, 
in my opinion, is the great evil which this system in- 
flicts upon the community, as well as the greatest 
wrong which it inflicts on the individuals. It is 
very easy to say, that compare my slaves with as 
many families of poor white people within a range 
of ten miles about, and they are better fed, better 
clothed, better lodged, and vastly freer from care and 
anxiety. That is true ; but there goes a man, now — 
Ah, Peter, how’dy, my good fellow ? ” — such were 
the words with which Mr Mason nodded to an im- 
mense brawny black man, who passed us just at this 
moment, driving a cart, — “there goes a man, now, 
who, if he was his own master, and in a country 
where his color did not deprive him of equal rights, 
.would, before he died, have a plantation of his own, 
and one worth owning, too. That fellow has a 
head ; his opinion upon any question of cultivation, 
or upon any application of plantation labor, is worth 
more, any day, than mine and that of my two over- 
seers put together. And do you suppose that slavery 
under any form can agree with such a man as that? 
There is a considerable class who seem to be born to 
be the mere instruments of others ; and if only such 
persons were born slaves, it might not be of so much 


A FUGITIVE. 


267 


consequence.” “ But among those born in servitude 
there are all sorts of characters. Why, Mr Mason, it 
might have happened to me or to you to be born a 
slave. ^ There are slaves here in North Carolina quite 
as white as either of us ; and do you suppose that 
under any circumstances we should have rested con- 
tent under such a fate ? We might have submitted, 
rather than jump out of the Trying-pan into thje fire, 
and yet have found the frying-pan not by any means 
our natural element.” 


CHAPTER XLII. 

Returning the next day to Carleton Hall, we 
found, sitting in the porch, a gentleman whom, from 
his dress and manner, I at once perceived to belong 
to the clerical profession. My host, who met him 
with great cordiality, introduced him to me as the 
Reverend Paul Telfair, rector of the Episcopal church 
of St Stephen’s. 

There was something in Mr Telfair’s presence 
which strongly impressed me, the moment I set my 
eyes upon him. He was a slight but rather tall 
young man, not, I should judge, above three or four 
and twenty. His pale but handsome features light- 
ened up, when he spoke, with a radiant smile, which 
seemed to spuead round him a serene halo. His ad- 
dress was perfectly simple and unpretending, and yet 
it had in it at once such dignify and winning sweet- 
ness as to put one in mind of a real minister of 
grace and messenger from heaven. 

“ This,” said Mr Mason, “ is the son of that Miss 
Montgomery, now Mrs Telfair, whose mother was 
once the owner of Poplar Grove, and at not finding 
whom still resident upon it you seemed so much dis^ 
appointed. I never saw that lady,” he continued; 
“but knowing the son as I do, I am not surprised 


268 


MEiMOIRS OF 


that you should so much have missed the presence 
of the mother.” 

It appeared, in the course of our subsequent con- 
versation, that the Montgomerys, having removed, 
after the loss of their property, to Charleston, had 
endeavored to support themselves, though much to 
the scandal of some of their relations, by setting up 
a female school. It was not long, however, before 
Miss * Montgomery attracted the admiration of a 
wealthy gentleman of that city, a Mr Telfair, whose 
wife she became, and by whom she had an only 
son — the young clergyman who had so favorably 
impressed me, and in whose face, striking as it was, 
there had yet appeared something familiar, which I 
now traced back to my recollection of the mother. 

“ Besides,” added Mr Mason, “ since you take so 
much interest in my system of plantation arrange- 
ments, let me tell you that Mr. Telfair is a main 
spoke in the wheel. Not only does he do all the 
maiTying and christening, services thought, both at 
Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, to be quite indis- 
pensable, but the keeping those who misbehave at 
home on Sunday is one of the most effective punish- 
ments which I can inflict. It is a great proof,” he 
added, ‘‘ of my young friend’s gifts, not only that he 
has so completely eclipsed the itinerant Methodists, 
and the vinegar-visaged Presbyterian exhorters, who 
used formerly to predominate in this neighborhood, 
but that even black parson Tom himself, for a long 
time the admypatij^n not only of my two plantations, 
but I may say of the whole county, has been content 
to restrain his gifts^ and to subside into the humble 
position of clerk and ^atechist.” 

Mr Telfair, as I afterwards learnt, had, through 
the influence of his mother, upon whom, during her 
state of poverty, religious ideas had made a deep 
impression, been devoted from an early age to the 
work of the Christian ministry. From a" child, he 
had esteemed himself set aside for that service ; and 
having been admitted to holy orders, had given 


A FUGITIVE. 


269 


himself up, without stint, to religious labors the 
greater part of the time, as rector of St Stephen’s, 
a few miles distant. 

One of the old parish churches of colonial times, 
when the church of England was the established 
religion of North Carolina, and indeed of all the 
southern states, St Stephen’s, since the revolution, 
had gone into a state of great decay and dilapida- 
tion. But though the roof had fallen, and the doors 
and windows had disappeared, the solid brick walls of 
the old church had yet remained standing. Mr Tel- 
fair, having chosen this neighborhood as a sort of 
missionary ground, had caused the old church to be 
repaired, mainly at his own expense, and had with 
untiring zeal gathered together a congregation, and 
revived the almost forgotten worship according to the 
decent ceremonies of the church of England. 

As was well befitting the disciple of one who had 
especially addressed himself to the poor and lowly, 
the despised and the rejected, the moral and religious 
condition of the slaves had been from the beginning 
a subject of very great interest with Mr Telfair. In 
Mr Mason he had found a zealous cobperator and 
active church-warden ; and the example of the one, 
and the bland and persuasive exhortations of the 
other, had not been without a marked influence, in 
the neighborhood, on the conduct of the masters and 
the condition of the servants. 

But whatever amelioration the system of slavery 
might be capable of, it was impossible for Mr Telfair, 
or any other man of observation and humanity, to 
regard it with any patience as a permanent condition 
of things. The intimate relations into which he was 
brought, both with the masters and the slaves, made 
him thoroughly aware of the false position in which 
both were placed by it ; and for want of any other ap- 
parent method of getting rid of so great an evil, he 
had entered with very great eagerness into the scheme 
of colonization. *He was himself the president of a 
county colonization society ; his personal exfiorta- 
23 " 


270 


MEMOIRS OF 


tion had led to the emancipation of several favorite 
slaves, with the view of sending them to Liberia; 
and his glowing imagination, overleaping, in the 
eagerness of benevolent hope, all bounds of time and 
space, seemed to regard as an event almost at hand 
the removal of the black and colored population from 
the United States, and the civilization and Christian- 
ization of Africa. So thoroughly did he seem him- 
self convinced, and so did he warm and light up with 
the subject, that, however visionary his hopes might 
appear, nothing could be more agreeable than to hear 
him give utterance to them. 

These brilliant hopes, however, we found for the 
moment obscured by an ominous shadow. Mr Tel- 
fair spoke without bitterness, yet not without indica- 
tions of the most poignant regret, of the late doings 
of the northern abolitionists, as having put back the 
cause of emancipation, he feared, for many, many 
years. He himself had just been made personally to 
feel their effects. He had established, in connection 
with his church, a Sunday school for the slaves, in 
which, besides oral instruction, some of them had 
been taught to read. A committee of planters had 
just waited upon him to require him to discontinue 
this course of instruction — in fact, during the present 
state of excitement, and, until further notice, to dis- 
continue his slave Sunday school altogether. “ Ah, 
captain Moore,” said Mr Telfair, addressing himself 
to me, “ this is but an unfavorable time for you to 
visit the southern states. You see what it is to have 
slavery in a country. In fact, it makes slaves of the 
whole of us. It now appears that the liberty of the 
press, and the freedom of speech, about which we 
have made .so many boasts, cannot be allowed, con- 
sistently with the public safety, in countries where 
slavery prevails. There is at this moment no more 
liberty of speech or of writing in any slave state — 
and from the accounts we get of mobs and riots in 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, the 
case does not seem to be much Better in the free 


A FUGITIVE. 


271 


states — than there is at Rome, Vienna, or Warsaw. 
I suppose that, in either of those cities, a man is at 
full liberty to express his opinion, in words or print, 
of domestic slavery as it exists in America. The 
only questions forbidden to be discussed there, are 
those relating to the domestic policy of those cities 
and countries. So here you may denounce Popery 
and Russian despotism as loudly as you please ; but 
pray be very careful what you say about domestic 
slavery. In any mixed company, I should not think 
it safe, just now, to say what I have said here. In 
fact, I find myself already a marked man. A printed 
letter of mine to a friend, on behalf of the coloniza- 
tion scheme, in which, in proof of the evils of slavery, 
I had quoted from Washington, Jefferson, Patrick 
Henry, and other distinguished patriots, when just 
ready for publication, was seized -the other day, at 
Richmond, by the committee there, and ordered to be 
burnt as an incendiary publication.” 

“ Indeed,” said I, “ then that unfortunate letter of 
yours was probably part of the bonfire that lighted 
my entrance into Richmond;” and I went on to 
give him an account of my adventures in that city. 
“ Not content with burning my letter,” so the good 
clergyman continued, “ if, in fact, it was not rather 
Washington and Jefterson for whom the burning was 
meant, the Richmond committee have reported me 
to our county committee as a suspected person, on 
whom an eye is to be kept ; and these good gentle- 
men, besides putting a stop to my Sunday school, 
have also taken my newspaper reading under their 
supervision. P"or some months past I had received 
through the post office a newspaper printed at New 
York, called the “ Emancipator.” It is, I understand, 
the chief organ of the new society of abolitionists 
there. It had been sent to me gratuitously, and I 
had read it with a good deal of interest, wishing to 
discover what its conductors would be at. feut this 
my good friends, or rather masters, of the committee 
of vigilance, consider altogethertoo dangerous. They 


272 


MEMOIRS OF 


cannot allow the peace of the country to be so per- 
illed. They have forbidden the postmaster to give 
out the paper any more, and they have forbidden me 
to take it out or to read it. This is the degree of 
liberty that exists at present in North Carolina!” — 
words spoken with an indignant emphasis, and some 
little bitterness, in spite of the serene self-control 
which Mr Telfair in general exhibited. 

“ And how does it happen, gentlemen,” said I, 
“ that the evils of slavery which it would appear have 
been not only pretty largely felt, but pretty freely dis- 
cussed among you, from the time of Jefferson down- 
ward, — and nowhere, as I have been told, more fully 
and freely than in some recent debates in the Virginia 
legislature, — how does it happen that this subject 
has become all at once prohibited? Pray, I should 
like to learn whal is the mighty difference, after all, 
between colonizationists, like our good friend Mr 
Telfair here, and these northern abolitionists, whose 
interference, he seems to think, is likely to prove so 
serious a damage to the cause of emancipation? 
Isn’t it slavery that you are both alike hostile to? 
Isn’t it emancipation that you are both alike aiming 
at ? ” “ The difference between us,” replied Mr Tel- 

fair, “ is sufficiently palpable, though I don’t so much 
wonder at your asking the question ; for I can per- 
ceive, especially since the late excitement broke out, 
a growing disposition to confound us together, and to 
set down as incendiary, and as hostile to the wel- 
fare of the south, the bare sentiment of dislike to 
slavery. But with respect to us colonizationists, the 
case is this : we admit the evils of slavery to be very 
great — so great that duty to ourselves, our children, 
to the entire population, blaclf and white, requires 
from us the greatest efforts to get rid of them. But 
we do not see how it is possible to get rid of these 
evils so long as the black population remains among 
us. It is a very common opinion in America, that it 
is impossible for two distinct races of men to live 
together, at least two races so distinct as the whites 


A FUGITIVE. 


273 


and the negroes, on any thing approaching to terms 
of equality. It seems to be believed that, so long as 
the blacks remain among us, we must either make 
slaves of them, or they will turn about and make 
slaves of us. The late president Jefferson gave ex- 
pression to this common opinion, by his remark that 
we hold the slaves like a wolf by the ear, whom it is 
neither safe to hold nor to let go. I must confess 
that I, for one, — and a considerable number of our 
colonization friends would probably concur with me, 
— do not exactly assent to this view of the case. It 
seems to me that we whites are the wolf, and the 
unfortunate negroes the lamb whom we have caught 
by the ear, and whom, if we only had the will, we 
might let go without any sort of danger. Why can’t 
we allow freedom to the negroes as well as to the 
Irish or the Germans ? But with the inveterate preju- 
dices of our people, it seems useless to preach that 
doctrine. The poorest, meanest, and most degraded 
of our whites would be all up in arms at the very 
idea of it. The more low, brutal, and degraded a 
white man is, the more strenuously does he insist on 
the natural superiority of the white men, and the 
more he is shocked at the idea of allowing freedom 
to the ‘ niggers.’ Our colonization system of eman- 
cipation yields to this invincible feeling. Before 
emancipating the slaves, or simultaneously with their 
emancipation, we propose to remove them out of the 
country. Regarded by the larger number as com- 
pletely visionary, and even by us who believe in it, 
expected to operate, at least at first, only by very 
slow degrees, this scheme has not been calculated to 
produce much alarm. Even very vivid pictures of 
the evils of slavery, and strong declamations against 
it, have been permitted, so long as they have been re- 
garded only as the expression of speculative opinions 
and of individual sentiment, accompanied, as they 
generally are, by the admission, more or less distinct, 
that, however great these evils may be, there is no 
hope or means of their removal so long as the two 
races remain in juxtaposition. 


274 


MEMOIRS OF 


“ But the new sect of the abolitionists has broken 
through all these. limits. In the first place, they be- 
gin with denouncing the holding of slaves as a sin in- 
consistent with any just pretensions to the character 
of a Christian. Now, there was a time, and that not 
many years ago, when the great body of the southern 
slaveholders would have laughed at this denunciation, 
because only a small portion of them made any pre- 
tension to be Christians, while with large numbers 
the open avowal of infidel opinions was not uncom- 
mon. But by the multiplied labors of the various 
sects within the last twenty-five years, the profession 
of Christianity, and in some respects, too, I hope, the 
practice of it, has very greatly increased among us ; 
and for our good slaveholding people to be told that 
they are no Christians, touches them in a very sensi- 
tive point. In fact, from our excessive squirming at 
the charge, I cannot but suspect myself that we feel 
a little as though there was some truth in it. 

“ Then, again, these abolitionists say your slaves 
have a right to be free, and it is your duty to set them 
free at once. You need not trouble yourselves about 
the consequences of doing your duty ; do it, and leave 
the consequences to God. 

What a difference it makes whether a thing is said 
in earnest, or only by way of flourish and clap-trap ? 
What a difference when a maxim is to be applied to 
our own case, and when to that of others ! Our good 
southern Democrats have been preaching for half a 
century, more or less, that all men are born free and 
equal — a maxim which they have set forth as the 
very basis of their political system ; but now, when 
they are asked, not in flourish, in jest merely, but in 
real earnest, themselves to carry their own doctrine 
into practice, you see how the wolf shows his teeth ! 

“ You will judge from all this,” added Mr Telfair, 
“ that I do not share the ferocious prejudices against 
the abolitionists, of which you have seen already, 
since you came among us, so many specimens. They 
have done me the honor to send me, by the mail, quite 


A FUGITIVE. 


27d 


a number of their publications, besides the newspaper 
that I spoke of. I have read them all attentively, and 
I can safely say, that the vulgar and current charge 
against them of stimulating the slaves to revolt is 
totally unfounded. The revolt which they have at- 
tempted to stimulate, and the revolt, I am very much 
inclined to think, of which our committees of vigilance 
are most afraid, is, a revolt of Christian consciences 
against the evils and enormities of slavery. 

“ But, although I admit the rectitude of their mo- 
tives, I do not any the less on that account condemn 
their conduct. You can judge from my own case 
the awkward position in which they have placed 
every southern well-wisher of the negroes. The only 
result, I am afraid, will be, to tighten the bonds of the 
slaves, to check all efforts that have been making for 
their mental and moral improvement, and to put the 
most serious obstacles in the way of that scheme of 
colonization, which is the only remedy for the sore 
evils of slavery which the south seems in the least 
■^o tolerate.” 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

Mr Telfair, perhaps from professional habit, 
seemed to run upon such subjects as occupied his 
mind, into a sort of lengthened discourse, and I let him 
go on without interruption. Mr Mason, I had ob- 
served during this conversation, had not let drop a 
single word ; and after Mr Telfair had left us, I felt 
some curiosity to draw him out. I accordingly put 
to him several questions, by way of getting at his 
opinion of the colonization scheme. “ I am a mem- 
ber,” he said, “ of the Colonization Society, secretary, 
in fact, of the same branch of which Mr Telfair is 
president; one of my servants, a superior man, who 
evinced a disposition to go, I set free and sent to 
Liberia ; but I am sorry to say he died of tbe season- 


276 


MEMOIRS OF 


ing fever within a month or two after his arrival. I 
always thought the Colonization Society a good thing, 
as a sort of a brooding hen, under whose wings the 
callow humane sentiment of the south might take 
shelter, and be cherished and kept alive against a time 
of more efficient action. I never expected any thing 
important from what it might do directly, but a good 
deal from its keeping the evils of slavery, and the 
necessity of some remedy for them, constantly before 
the public mind. The best thing it has done yet cer- 
tainly is, its having hatched out of its northern eggs 
these same abolition societies, which are making so 
much stir just at this moment.” 

“ Indeed,” I asked, “ and is that the fact ? ” 

“ So far as I am informed,” said Mr. Mason, “ all 
the most active persons in these abolition societies 
first had their attention drawn to the subject by the 
colonization scheme. Of that scheme several of them 
were originally warm champions. But on further 
consideration, it seemed too much like carrying coals 
to Newcastle, the transporting some two or three mil- 
lions of people from their homes, where their labor is 
greatly needed, and is capable of being productively 
applied, across the ocean to an uncultivated wilder- 
ness, where the native supply of labor already far ex- 
ceeds the demand. As the slaves must be emanci- 
pated before they can be colonized, it seemed quite 
effort enough to emancipate them here, without being 
obliged to provide in addition for their transportation 
out of the country, at immense and ruinous expense, 
depriving the southern states of that productive labor 
which is the very thing they stand most in need of. 
It was these ideas combined with those of the sin and 
wrong of slavery, a wrong and sin to be abandoned, 
not gradually, but at once, that no doubt gave rise to 
the abolition societies.” 

“ But,” I asked, “ in view of such results as those 
mentioned by Mr Telfair, how can you speak of the 
springing up of these societies as a good thing ? ” 

“ I hope,” said Mr Mason, looking round with an air 


A FUGITIVE. 


277 


of some uneasiness, but whether real or assumed I 
could hardly tell — “ I hope there are no lurking mem- 
bers of the committee of vigilance within ear shot. 
Our overseers have a habit of playing the eavesdrop- 
per among the negro cabins, and how soon the same 
system may be extended to us masters is more than 
I can tell. But to answer your question,” — and here 
he sunk his voice almost to a whisper, — “ the first step 
towards the cure of any serious disorder is to under- 
stand the real nature of it, and especially to bring the 
patient himself to a true sense of his own condition. 
And that is a result which these abolition societies 
are already beginning to produce. Even those who 
have thought most about it have never hitherto been 
fully aware of the ?*eal nature and extent of the evil 
we had to deal with. We knew indeed that our 
American goddess of liberty lay asleep and dreaming, 
like Milton’s Eve, with a foul toad at her ear ; yet we 
thought that, after all, it was but a toad, which, how- 
ever ugly and venomous, the growing light of day, as 
the sun was getting towards high noon, would drive 
to skulk into some hole or other. But these northern 
abolitionists having undertaken to poke the creature 
a little by way of hastening his progress, choosing for 
that purpose the famous national declaration of ^urs 
that all men are created free, with certain unalien- 
able rights, — see how this, as we thought compara- 
tively harmless thing, starts up a horrible and blood- 
thirsty monster, threatening to swallow down the poor 
trembling goddess of American liberty at a single 
gulp ! I do not mean the liberty of black men or col- 
ored men, — for here in America they never had any, 
— but the liberty of us white men, us masters. 

“The pretended danger of slave insurrection is 
made occasion for suppressing all liberty of thought, 
speech, or writing, derogatory to the institution of 
slavery. That danger does very well to frighten fools 
with, and it is by frightening fools that knaves gen- 
erally get themselves intrusted with power. But the 
insurrection, as Mr Telfair very well remarked, which 
24 


278 


MEMOIRS OF 


the leaders in this business are most afraid of, is not 
an insurrection of slaves, but an insurrection of con- 
science — an insurrection which they intend to find 
the means, if they can, to anticipate and prevent. 

‘‘ Here, now,” he added, taking up a newspaper, 
“ here it is openly confessed and stated in so many 
words by the Washington Telegraph, a leading 
champion of the rights and interests of the slave- 
holder, and a chief promoter of all the prevailing 
alarm: ‘We hold’ — here he read from the paper — 
‘that we have most to fear from the gradual operation 
of public opinion among ourselves, and that those 
are the most insidious and dangerous invaders of our 
rights and interests, who, coming to us in the guise 
of friendship, endeavor to persuade us that slavery is 
a sin, a curse, and an evil. Our greatest cause of 
apprehension is from the operation of the morbid 
sensibility which appeals to the consciences of our 
people, and would make them the voluntary instru- 
ments of their own destruction.’ And the way in 
which it is proposed to prevent these appeals to the 
morbid sensibility of conscience is pretty distinctly 
set forth in another paragraph, which I find quoted 
from the Columbia Telescope, a South Carolina pa- 
per : ‘ Let us declare that the question of slavery is 
not,' and shall not be, open to discussion ; that the 
system is deep rooted among us, and must remain 
forever ; that the very moment any private individual 
attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, 
and the necessity of putting means in operation to 
secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue 
shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill.’ 

“ This appeal to southern consciences, which it is 
proposed to put down by this summary process, has 
revealed the true state of the case. The great mass 
of our people, whether at the south or the north, even 
those who speak of slavery as an evil, do not really 
regard it so. Compared with the emancipation of the 
laves, they regard it as a positive good. They may 
possibly admit that slavery is bad, but they are quite 


A FUGITIVE. 


279 


certain that freedom would be much worse. Then, 
again, there appears to be among us a vastly larger 
class than any body supposed, who hold that slavery is 
no evil at all in any sense, but a positive good — a 
good thing for the slaves, who are thus enabled to live 
free from care, in sleek and happy contentment, and a 
good thing for the masters, who, in being raised above 
the necessity of base and servile employments, are 
thus enabled to preserve the dignity of freedom. This 
romantic view of the case might not, perhaps, so well 
bear discussion, but you see they do not intend to 
allow any. Yet, without a full and free discussion of 
our existing system, in all its bearings and operations, 
how can we reasonably hope or expect to bring about 
any beneficial change ? The struggle which you 
now see beginning, and which this northern appeal to 
southern consciences has provoked, is plainly, to my 
mind, the final and decisive struggle between the ex- 
tension and perpetugrtion of slavery on the one hand 
and emancipation on the other. The institution of 
slavery in this country is vastly more potent than any 
body had supposed. It not only has complete con- 
trol of the governments of all the southern states, so 
as to be enabled to enact whatever laws it pleases, 
but, by means of its vigilance committees and its sys- 
tem of lynchings, it completely overrides both laws 
and constitutions in the exercise of a despotic and 
arbitrary power, derived from the discretionary disci- 
pline of the plantation, but totally inconsistent with 
all established ideas of English or American lib- 
erty. Not content with this, it is eagerly clutching 
at all the powers and patronage of the general gov- 
ernment, which it seeks to transform from a bulwark 
of freedom to a bulwark of slavery ; and not content 
with this, it seeks to dictate to the northern states a 
course of action in conformity with this same view. 
Having completely suppressed, at least for the time 
being, all liberty, at the south, of speech, writing, or 
reading on this forbidden subject, it is endeavoring to 
accomplish the same thing at the north. Northern 


280 


MEMOIRS OF 


politicians are stimulated, by hopes of currying south- 
ern favor, to put themselves at the head of anti-aboli- 
tion mobs, and northern merchants, by the hope of 
securing southern customers, to hold public meetings 
to call upon the sta«te legislatures to pass laws to re- 
strict the liberty of the press. That very thing I see 
has just been done in the degenerate city of Philadel- 
phia ; and Boston and New York are very loudly 
called upon to imitate the disgraceful example. Yes, 
Mr Moore, seasonably or unseasonably the great bat- 
tle has begun, the great struggle on which the future 
fate of America is to depend. The slavery or the 
freedom of our colored inhabitants is an interesting 
question; that, however, has already become but a 
merely subordinate one. The first great question is. 
Shall not merely the political, but the intellectual, 
moral, and religious control of this country pass into 
the hands of the upholders of perpetual slavery ? or 
shall our old American notions that all men are equal 
before God, and ought to be equal before the law, 
continue to circulate ? Shall the control, not only of 
our politics and legislation, but of our newspapers, 
our churches, our literature, our public sentiment, 
pass into the hands of the hard, the cruel, the tyrants 
by nature, the mercenary, the scoffers at justice and 
human rights, the sleek, comfortable time-servers, 
equally ready, for a consideration, to read prayers to 
God or to the devil ? or shall the votaries of human 
advancement, the friends of man, the true servants of 
the God of love, have liberty to live, speak, and labor 
among us? The first question is about our own 
liberty, and that not alone the liberty of acting, but 
the mere liberty even of writing, reading, talking, and 
thinking.” 

Warming with his subject, and striding up and 
down fhe room, Mr Mason had uttered all the latter 
part of this long discourse, not without many gestic- 
ulations, and in a tone of voice rising at times a little 
above the ordinary key. But he suddenly checked 
himself, and added, in a subdued tone, “ I, for my 


A FUGITIVE. 


281 


part, had rather been born the most miserable negro 
in North Carolina, than, having enjoyed, as I have, 
the advantages of education and the privileges of 
freedom, to find myself, from being the master, as I 
had imagined, of my own slaves, my own thoughts, and 
my own course of conversation and reading, all at 
once converted into a deputy slave driver, under a 
committee of vigilance, composed, as those commit- 
tees generally are, of the greatest fools and the great- 
est scoundrels among us, and obliged to read, talk, 
and think under their inquisitorial jurisdiction.” 

“ Pardon me,” said I, “ Mr Mason, if I take the 
liberty 6f putting one question. How is it possible 
that, entertaining the opinions which, since I have 
enjoyed the pleasure of your hospitality; I have heard 
you so freely express — how is it possible that you can 
continue a slaveholder ? ” “ As to that,” answered 

Mr Mason, “ you must have observed before how that 
the opinions and practices of men do not always run 
in parallel channels. A man’s own opinion and his 
own choice have often very little to do with the posi- 
tion which he occupies. The people on this and the 
other plantation came to me by inheritance. You 
certainly would not have me, to escape from a posi- 
tion personally disagreeable, sell out my interest in 
slaves, pocket the money, move off to the north, and 
leave them to their fate.” 

“ No, certainly,” I replied ; “ if they are to remain 
slaves, I hardly think they would gain any thing by 
a change of masters.” 

“ Their remaining slaves,” said Mr Mason, “is not, 
at present, a thing within my control. In the first 
place, there exists still an undischarged mortgage, 
in which they are included. But that I hope to pay 
off within the next six months. Then the portions 
of these two young sisters of mine are a lien upon 
the estate, for the discharge of which I have yet made 
only a partial provision. Then, again, here in North 
Carolina, a master cannot set his slaves free at his 
own will and pleasure. He must first have the 
24 * 


282 


MEMOIRS OF 


consent of the county court; and nowadays that is 
not a thing so easy to be obtained.” 

‘‘ However,” he added, “ since I have gone so far in 
making a confidant of you, I will tell you yet another 
secret. I do not mean to remain a slaveholder except 
just so long as is necessary, to escape from that posi- 
tion with honor to myself and benefit to all the par- 
ties concerned. All my arrangements are made with 
that view. To give me any freedom of action in this 
matter, it is necessary first to clear off the encum- 
brances, the debts due, and the portions of my sisters. 
Those sisters are to set off in a few days for the north, 
there to be placed for their education. I mean to in- 
vest their money at the north. I hope they will marry 
and settle at the north. They shall have no slave- 
holding husbands if I can help it, and that for more 
reasons than one. I don’t want my sisters to be the 
mere heads of a seraglio, with some black or brown 
favorite, perhaps, quite carrying the day over them in 
real preference. Their poor mother — you are to ob- 
serve they are only half sisters of mine — suffered 
quite enough in that way. The poor woman aetually 
fretted herself to death with jealousy and vexation, 
for which, I am sorry to say, my honored father gave 
her too much cause. In fact, he had very patriarchal 
ideas. You may easily perceive, from the variety of 
complexion, that, among the servants here and at 
Poplar Grove, there is a considerable infusion of 
Anglo-Saxon blood. I don’t doubt that a large part 
of the lighter colored among them can claim more or 
less of blood relationship to myself ; and therefore I 
feel the more called upon to act the part, not of a 
mean, selfish despot, but of the head of a family, the 
chief of a tribe, whose clansmen are his poor rela- 
tions, who have a family claim upon him for the 
judicious conduct of their joint affairs. 

“ My plan is this : As soon as the debts are paid, 
and I have laid by enough money to purchase a good 
tract of land in Ohio or Indiana, I mean to emigrate 


A FUGITIVE. 


283 


with the whole family. To set them free here, even 
if there were no legal obstacles in the way, would 
not, in the present state of feeling towards free col- 
ored people, and the little chance they can have to 
rise in the world, be much of a favor. It would be 
too much like setting them free as the coons are, as 
one of them once said to me, making a sort of free 
vermin of them, rather than free men. And with the 
ignorance and incapacity which a life of slavery has 
engendered, and the prejudices and obstacles they 
would have to encounter in any of the free states, — 
in some respects more violent and oppressive than 
those felt here, — it would hardly be much of a favor 
to send them out by themselves, to seek their fortune 
at the north. To give them a fair chance, to prevent 
them from bringing a disgrace on the idea of eman- 
cipation, I intend to go with them, and to be the 
leader and founder of the colony. That is the work 
^for which J reserve myself. I live a bachelor, as you 
see; nor do I ever mean to marry, so long as I live in 
a slave state. With all these people to settle and 
provide for, I have quite family enough, quite encum- 
brances enough on my hands, without that.” 

What an honest glow of enthusiasm, confidence, 
and self-respect kindled in Mr Mason’s face as he 
spoke ! How. the nobleness of the man grew upon 
me as he thus detailed his plans and intentions I 
Here, indeed, was the spirit of genuine Christianity. 
Here was a man indeed. How small a number of 
such men would suffice to save the southern Sodom 
from perdition ! to make it truly a land of joy, of 
justice, of peace, plenty, and of hope, instead of what 
it now is — the stumbling-block of freedom, the op- 
probrium of civilization and Christianity I 


284 


MEMOIRS OF 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

In leaving Mr Mason’s hospitable mansion, where 
I had protracted my stay beyond all reason, I felt 
like parting with an old friend. As he pressed my 
hand and said farewell, he bade me remember that 
much had passed between us in confidence ; and that 
any hint, dropped incautiously, as to his opinions 
and intentions, might affect him most injuriously, en- 
dangering his peaceful residence in the country, and 
it might be his life. 

. Returning to the stage tavern, whence I had made 
this agreeable side visit, I prepared to pursue my 
southern journey. I resolved, however, while for- 
warding my baggage to Charleston by the stage 
coach, to proceed 'myself leisurely on horseback ; for 
I had some curiosity to strike upon, if I could, and 
to retrace the road which I had followed in my es- 
cape from slavery. It being made known that I 
wished to purchase a horse, I soon found myself 
beset by a dozen jockeys or more, who did their best 
to impose upon me, one after the other, animals 
lame, halt, blind, and broken-winded. But I suc- 
ceeded, by the aid and assistance of rfty friend, the 
Yankee stage driver, — whom I found very knowing 
on the subject of horse flesh, and who, to explain the 
fact that so many broken-down animals were offered, 
observed to me aside, and with a knowing wink, 
that these southern folks treated their horses almost 
as bad as they did their niggers, — in mounting 
myself to my satisfaction ; and with a few shirts 
and other necessaries stuffed into my saddle-bags, I 
started afresh on my journey. 

A few days’ travelling, without the occurrence of 
any thing remarkable, brought me into the vicinity 
of Camden ; and as I carefully scrutinized the road, 
I did not fail presently to recognize that very same 
little hedge tavern where Thomas and myself had 


A FUGITIVE. 


285 


been taken as prisoners, and whence, by the aid of 
the blue-eyed little girl, we had effected our escape, 
carrying with us the spoils of Egypt, in the shape of 
the clothes and money of our captors. With minds 
excited as mine had been by the incidents of that 
eventfnl escape, the whole scene, with all its sur- 
roundings, stamps itself wonderfully on the memory. 
I could recall exactly the general appearance of the 
road, as we had been dragged along, fastened to the 
saddles of our captors, and of the little hedge tavern, 
as it had first appeared in sight ; and no sooner did I 
again see it, than I recognized it at once for the very 
same. Indeed, there was the less difficulty in doing 
that, since, in the whole of my horseback jour- 
ney, I had not found a single house which had any 
appearance of newness about it ; nor were houses of 
such frequent occurrence as to tend much to confuse 
one’s recollection. Twenty years had made very 
little change in that part of the country. As the 
house still had the external appearance of a tavern, 
or at least of a whiskey shop, I determined to stop a 
while to reconnoitre. 

A stout and rather good-looking boy of twelve or 
fourteen, without hat or shoes, and with no other 
clothes than a shirt, not lately washed, and the tat- 
tered fragments of a pair of pantaloons, so much too 
large for him as probably to have been his father’s, 
took my horse as I dismounted at the door, and 
promised to provide him with water and corn. Walk- 
ing into the single room which served for kitchen, 
bar room, dining and sleeping room for the family, 
the only other room in the house being reserved for 
guests, I observed an old crone of a woman sitting 
by the window, zealously plying a loom in which she 
was weaving a piece of coarse homespun. Two 
small children, who were rolling and tumbling on the 
floor, spoke to her as “ granny.” She might doubt- 
less have once been the mistress of the family, but 
seemed now to have resigned the more immediate 
charge of matters to a younger woman, probably a 


286 


MEMOIRS OF 


daughter of hers, as the children, while calling the 
old woman “granny,” called the younger one “mam- 
my.” This younger woman stood at a table, mixing 
corn cakes in a great wooden tray. She was very 
poorly dressed, and without shoes or stockings ; but 
with an expression of good nature on her face, and 
an expressive, soft blue eye, which marked her, how- 
ever rude and poverty stricken, as one of those ten- 
der-hearted females who can never look upon distress 
without doing what they can to remove it. Enter- 
ing into conversation with the women about the 
weather, crops, distance to Camden, whether they 
^could give me any thing for dinner, and so forth, I 
presently inquired, as if incidentally, whether they 
had long lived at this place. “ O, law, yes,” said the 
old woman at the loom. “ Why, my Susy, there, 
who, you see, has already a family growing up about 
her — she was born in this house, and three or four 
more children, too, older than she, and as many more 
younger ; but they are all gone now, except only her 
that stays by her old mother.” 

“ Not dead, I hope ? ” I asked, in a sympathizing 
tone. 

■ “ O, no! not dead,” said the old woman, “but as 
good as dead to me ; all gone, all moved off, some to 
Florida, and some to Alabama, and some to Texas, 
and that’s the last I shall ever hear of them ; ” and 
here followed a deep sigh. 

“But don’t you sometimes get a letter?” I in- 
quired. 

“ Get a letter!” said the old woman, with a toss 
of the head, such as left little doubt in my mind that 
she had been a smart piece in her day, very different 
from her good-natured daughter — “ get a letter ! And 
which of my sons and daughters, do you suppose, 
knows how to write, or to read either, for that matter ? 
Poor people here in Carolina don’t have any chance 
at learning; no schools, and nothing to pay the 
teacher with, if we had any. That’s what has made 
them all move off to seek a living elsewhere. Susy, 


A FUGITIVE. 


287 


'here, knows how to read; I reckon you must have 
heard of it somewhere; but how do you suppose it 
happened ? When she was a young girl, there was 
a Yankee pedler stopped once at our house, one 
of those fellows as goes travelling with a horse and 
wagon, selling wooden clocks, — and there’s one of 
them now,” (here she pointed to the corner where 
the machine hung,) “ only it hasn’t gone any this ten 
years, — and pins and needles, and tin ware, and 
they do say, wooden nutmegs, though I don’t know 
as this one that I am speaking of ever sold any. 
Awful cheats, though, some of those Yankee pedlers 
are — awful ! ” said the old lady, dropping her shuttle, 
and holding up both hands, and looking at me with 
a very woe-begone expression. “ That’s one reason 
our folks are all so poor, and that even those who 
own slaves have to keep moving off to Alabama, 
because these cheating Yankee pedlers carry off all 
the money out of the country ; at least, that’s what 
I heard colonel Thomas, the member of congress, 
say, the last time he was round this way electioneer- 
ing. Howsomever, I don’t know any harm of this 
particular Yankee that I was speaking of. He used 
to come round about once a year ; and he sold his 
things a good deal cheaper, and I can’t say but that 
they were just as good, as you can buy in Camden 
town. Well, one time this pedler came to our house, 
sick with a mighty smart fever. I thought he would 
die, sure enough ; and I rather reckon he would, if 
Susy, there, though she was then only twelve or four- 
teen years old, had not looked after him just as if he 
had been her own father. And so, you see, when he 
began to get well, as it was a good while before he 
was able to travel again, he took to teaching the 
child to read, as he said, out of gratitude. He put 
her on the track, and gave her a spelling book out of 
those he carried round to sell, and a nice, new Bible, 
— get it, Susy, and show it to the stranger, — which 
he said his mother gave him just before he set out 
from Connecticut; and so, you see, whenever any 


288 


MEMOIRS OF 


pedler, or Methodist minister, or other person of learn- 
ing that wasn’t too proud, came along, Susy would 
get a lesson from them, till she learnt to read as glib 
as could be ; and now she teaches her children too. 
You wouldn’t believe it, but that boy Jim, there,” 
pointing to the boy who had taken my horse, “ knows 
how to read ! All his mother’s doings ; and if he can 
only now and then get hold of a newspaper, he is as 
proud as a peacock.” 

All this long history of her daughter, on the part of 
the old lady, served to confirm me in the conjecture I 
had formed that the barefooted matron before me, dis- 
tinguished by such remarkable literary accomplish- 
ments and motherly tenderness, and to the first-rate 
excellency of whose corn cakes I was myself shortly 
after able to testify, must be the identical little girl to 
whom Thomas and myself had owed our escape on 
that night, so memorable to me, on which I had 
started on my northern travels in pursuit of freedom. 

To make matters sure, while she was setting a table 
for my dinner in the other room, I inquired of her if 
she could recollect how, a great many years ago, — it 
must have been before the time that the pedler taught 
her to read, — two men, one black, the other white, had 
been brought prisoners to her mother’s house, and 
confined for the night in this very room. As I went 
into the matter somewhat in detail, I could easily 
perceive, as the circumstances were recalled to her 
memory, though she said nothing, a gleam of wonder- 
ing recognition lighting up a face, which, though it 
could not be called handsome, more especially as the 
uncombed hair hanging about her head gave her a 
sort of wild appearance, had yet upon it an unmis- 
takable stamp of good heartedness, which did not 
fail to make a very agreeable impression. But when, 
in the course of the story, I came to speak of the little 
girl who stole in at night, and, while their keepers 
slept, cut the bonds of the prisoners, alarm and anx- 
iety spread over her before smiling features ; and 
though she strove hard to preserve an unconscious 


A FUGITIVE. 


289 


self-composure, it was easy to perceive that she expe- 
rienced no little terror, as if she were now in danger 
of being called to account for that act of childish gen- 
erosity. However, I very soon quieted her fears on 
that score. Great, indeed, was her astonishment, when 
I informed her, that I was the selfsame white pris- 
oner whom she had released, and what was more, 
that I was both ready and able to make some return 
to her for the favor she had then done me. 

Upon taking the liberty after this introduction, and 
the assurance that I wished to befriend her, to inquire 
a little into her domestic affairs, I learnt, chiefly in- 
deed from this old woman, who insisted upon doing 
pretty much all the talking, that her husband, though 
a good sort of a man enough, was shiftless and idle, 
and that the support of the family devolved pretty 
much on the women. The husband, indeed, wanted to 
emigrate, but the old woman, with a degree of home 
feeling not very usual, so far as I have noticed, with 
that class of the American people, was unwilling to 
go, and the daughter would not without the mother. 
It seemed to be the great object of the daughter’s 
ambition to send her eldest boy, Tom, to school. She 
had already taught him all she knew, and he was 
presently called in to give a specimen of his g^ccom- 
plishments by reading a chapter from the pedler’s 
Bible, which the good mother produced from a closet, 
and which, carefully covered with cloth, was evidently 
preserved with great care. 

There was, it seemed, in that neighborhood, what 
was called a manual labor boarding school, lately set 
up by the Methodists, of which religious sect the boy’s 
mother was a zealous member. This school was 
principally designed for the instruction of those of 
limited means, who, by laboring a certain number of 
hours in the day, might acquire, along with their 
learning, some mechanical trade, and at the same time 
diminish the cost of their board and instruction. 
This cost, even without such reduction, did not much 
exceed the moderate sum of a hundred dollars a year. 
But though, by great economy, my benefactress had 


290 


MEMOIRS OF 


already laid aside, as she told me, about thirty-seven 
dollars, where the rest of the hundred was to come 
from — and she wanted the boy to have at least a 
year’s schooling — she did not know; and besides, it 
would take about the whole of her present savings to 
fit him out with clothes, books, and other necessaries. 

I bade the good woman make herself easy on that 
score, and the boy having washed and dressed himself, 
and caught a scrubby pony belonging to the family, 
we set out together that same afternoon to visit the 
school, which was at no great distance. 

The founder and chief teacher of it, lately a trav- 
elling minister of the Methodist connection, but who 
had now devoted himself entirely to this new work, 
was, I found, originally from the north. He had been 
bred a shoemaker, but feeling a call to preach, had 
quitted his original vocation, and after many wander- 
ings had finally reached South Carolina, of which 
circuit he had become one of the preachers. In point 
of education and manners, the contrast was very 
marked indeed between this good man (for such I soon 
satisfied myself he was) and my late clerical acquaint- 
ance, Mr Telfair ; but in zeal, enthusiasm, and the 
desire of benefiting those about them, both physically 
and spiritually, there were strong points of resem- 
blance between them. On the whole, I was well sat- 
isfied that my young protegt should be trusted in such 
good hands. I paid down for him his board and 
tuition for a year, and in case it should be thought 
best for him to remain a second year, I left with the 
teacher an order on the merchant in Charleston, on 
whom I had letters of credit. I also desired to be 
.informed by letter, through the same source, of the 
boy’s progress and promise, with a view, if he proved 
deserving, of doing something more for him. Having 
sent him home with money enough to fit him out, 
without intrenching on his mother’s little store, I 
turned my horse’s head towards Charleston, resolved 
to take my route as nearly as I could in the general 
direction of my former travels in that region. 


A FUGITIVE. * 


291 


CHAPTER XLV. 

As I began to approach the neighborhood of Loosa- 
hatchie, I perceived, at a distance on the road, a group 
of men on horseback, upon whom, as they moved at 
a very slow pace, I gained rapidly. As I drew nearer, 
the group presented a very striking appearance. There 
were twelve or fifteen fierce-looking white men, very 
variously mounted, with rifles in their hands, and well 
provided with pistols and bowie knives, their dresses 
bedaubed with half-dry mud, as though they had been 
engaged in some aquatic expedition. A negro fellow, 
who followed on foot, and by the side of whom, with 
a sharp eye upon him, rode a white man armed to the 
teeth, held in leash some four or five savage-looking 
dogs, which I easily recognized as of the breed usually 
trained and employed for hunting runaway slaves. 
But the most remarkable objects, and those upon 
which the attention of the white men of the company 
seemed to be fixed with looks gloomy and ferocious, 
though not unmingled with triumph, were near the 
centre of the group, a little in front. Here I perceived 
the apparently lifeless body of a white man, whose 
pale features bore still a scowl of brutal rage upon 
them, that contrasted strangely with their death-like 
fixedness. The clothes, muddy and torn, as if in some 
recent struggle, were all dabbled with blood, which 
seemed still to ooze from a fatal wound in the breast. 
The body had been secured on the back of a horse, 
which was led by a negro man, whose blank and 
stolid features, upon which, however, I thought I could 
trace a certain obscure gleam of repressed satisfaction, 
presented a curious contrast, as did that of the black 
man who led the hounds, to the fierce, furious, and 
indignant looks of the white men. 

Side by side with this dead body rode a black man, 
wounded and bleeding, and evidently a prisoner, for 
his feet were tied together under the horse’s belly, and 


292 


MEMOIRS OF 


his hands bound behind him. He was a man of most 
powerful and athletic frame, verging on old ^ge, with 
an enormous bushy beard, weak, apparently from his 
wounds, and almost fainting, so that it seerhed with 
great difficulty that he kept erect ; yet, in spite of his 
feebleness and captivity, and the vengeful glances 
mixed with occasional curses, which his captors di- 
rected at him, still preserving, in a certain haughty 
and dogged aspect of defiance, the look of one who 
had been long accustomed to liberty. 

There was another captive in the company on foot, 
with a rope round his neck fastened to the saddle of 
one of the white men, of a lighter color than the 
mounted prisoner, barefoot and bareheaded, as was 
the other, and with very scanty clothing. He did not 
appear to be wounded ; but his back was all cut and 
bleeding, as if he had just undergone a most severe 
flagellation, and his woful, supplicating, subdued 
look made the sullen, defiant air of his fellow-captive 
on horseback the more remarkable. 

Riding up by the side of the mounted master of the 
hounds, who brought up the rear of this strange cav- 
alcade, I inquired what had happened. It was appar- 
ent from his manner and language, notwithstanding 
the rude company in which I found him, that he was 
a person of cultivation, not unaccustomed to civilized 
society. Indeed, it soon appeared that he was the 
owner of a neighboring plantation, who, with some 
of his friends and neighbors, and other rougher pro- 
fessional assistants, engaged for the occasion, had 
been out on a grand slave hunt. The dead man they 
were bringing back was, he told me, no other than 
his own overseer. 

This overseer was, he said, a very smart, driving 
fellow, a Yankee, who bad first visited that part of 
the country as a pedler, but who had afterwards 
turned schoolmaster,' and then overseer. It was gen- 
erally observed, that these Yankee overseers would 
contrive to get the most work out of the people, and 
being somewhat in debt, he had employed him on that 


A FUGITIVE. 


293 


very account. But in the great ambition of Mr Jon- 
athan Snapdragon — for such was his name — to sus- 
tain the reputation of the section of the country from 
which he came, he had rather overdone the matter. 
The price of cotton was unusually high, and in hope 
of making an extraordinary crop, this Yankee over- 
seer had resolved to work a couple more acres to the 
hand than had ever before been attempted on that 
plantation. What made the matter worse, the corn, 
of which the crop in all that section of the country 
had been light the preceding year, fell short, and it 
became , necessary, in addition to the increased tasks, 
to put the people on half allowance. However, by 
means of a pretty liberal use of the whip, in which the 
Yankee overseer was a great adept, and which he 
seemed to take a real delight in, things had worried 
along till just at the pinch of the season, when it all 
depended upon three or four weeks of most assiduous 
labor, whether the weeds or the cotton should gain 
the ultimate ascendency. Just at this crisis of the 
fate of the crop, when their services were most wanted, 
all the prime male hands had scurvily skulked off 
a few nights since into the woods, leaving the overseer 
with the women, children, and sick, to contend against 
the weeds as best he could ; and that, too, said my 
communicative planter, looking at me with the air of 
a most ill-treated man, and as if sure of my sympathy, 
with cotton at sixteen cents the pound, and promising 
to be higher yet by the time the crop was ready for 
the market. 

There had, he told me, been prowling about in that 
neighborhood, for a great many years past, perhaps 
twenty or more, to the infinite annoyance of the whole 
country, a runaway negro, known commonly among 
the people as Wild Tom. He was believed to belong 
to old general Carter, a rich planter, of Charleston, 
who had long ago offered a standing reward of a thou- 
sand dollars for his capture, dead or alive. The story 
was, that he had run away from Loosahatchie, one of 
general Carter’s rice plantations some distance below, 
25 * 


294 


MEMOIRS OF 


after having first killed the overseer in some quarrel 
about whipping his wife ; and the burning down of the 
expensive rice mills at Loosahatchie, which had hap- 
pened no less than five or six times within the last 
twenty years, had been commonly ascribed to his 
artful and daring malice and revenge. 

Great efforts had been made at times to take this 
dangerous outlaw, and many ingenious plans had 
been formed to entrap him, but all had hitherto failed, 
not without the desperate wounding of several per- 
sons who had met him in personal encounter. Pie 
seemed to have various lurking-places, scattered over 
a considerable range of country, from one to another 
of which he ffed, as occasion required, thus eluding all 
attempts at his capture. Sometimes, when the pur- 
suit after him had been very hot, he would seem to 
disappear for months, or even a year or two, but was 
pretty certain to make his reappearance when least 
expected and least welcome. Had he merely con- 
fined himself to the petty depredations necessary to 
support himself and his band of confederates, the 
matter would have been of less consequence ; but he 
was believed to keep up an underhand communica- 
tion with almost every plantation in the neighbor- 
hood, and to be a general instructor in mischief and 
insubordination, an aider and abetter of runaways, 
and harborer of fugitives. 

This same Wild Tom had been seen, within a short 
time past, lurking about in the neighborhood; and it 
was suspected that the late stampede had not taken 
place without his aid and assistance. It was deemed 
a much easier thing to find and to take him encum- 
bered by a dozen or twenty raw recruits than if alone, 
or only attended, as he generally was, or at least was 
generally supposed to be, — for in all that was com- 
monly reported of him, there was a great deal more 
of conjecture than of knowledge, — by one or two 
trusty, tried, and experienced companions. With my 
new acquaintance, the planter, — from whom I was 
deriving all this information, in which, since he had 


A FUGITIVE. 


295 


made mention of Wild Tom, 1 began to feel the 
deepest interest, — the recovery of his people was a 
matter almost of life and death, pecuniarily speaking, 
since, unless they were recovered, it would be ne- 
cessary for him to abandon half or more of his crop, 
and that too with cotton at sixteen cents the pound, 
and promising to be higher ; for hired free laborers 
were things unknown in that part of the country, 
nor could even slave labor be hired at that season of 
the year, when every body was straining for dear life 
against the weeds, and when the ordinary supply of 
almost every plantation was expected to be diminished 
by the absence of a certain number of incorrigible fel- 
lows, who make it a rule, just at that season,, to absent 
themselves for a summer vacation in the woods, 
being willing to risk the severest punishment they 
might encounter when taken, for the sake, at that par- 
ticular season of the year and the crop, of a few weeks 
of agreeable woodland retirement. And here, indeed, 
a strong resemblance might be traced between them 
and very many of their masters, who, as the hot 
weather and unhealthy season came on, were accus- 
tomed to abandon their plantations, and to figure 
away for a few weeks, as grand as runaway Cuffee 
himself, at Philadelphia, New York, or Saratoga, to 
the astonishment of admiring and curious Yankees, 
in the assumed character of millionaires and nabobs ; 
though sure to pay for it by pinching at home all the 
rest of the year, and living in almost as much terror 
of duns, writs, and executions, as their unhappy slaves 
do of the lash. In this extremity, therefore, my new 
acquaintance had offered a large reward for the re- 
covery of his people ; to which inducement was added 
the standing reward for Wild Tom ; also other rewards 
which had been offered for other runaways from other 
plantations in the neighborhood, more numerous this 
year than usual on account of the short supply of corn, 
and the greater breadth of cotton, which the prevail- 
ing high price had caused to be planted. A grand 
hunt had accordingly been proclaimed, and at short 


296 


MEMOIRS OF 


notice a company of near a hundred men had been 
collected, planters, overseers, loafers, poor whites, with 
four or five professional slave catchers, and several 
packs of hounds, armed to the teeth, and prepared to 
make a search of the neighboring swamps, in which 
it was customary for the runaways to take refuge, 
lying hid by day, and coming out by night to supply 
themselves by killing cattle and otherwise, and to com- 
municate with their wives and friends who remained 
behind. The season indeed was very favorable to 
this operation, an uncommonly long drought having 
dried up the swamps to a considerable extent, and 
made them much more accessible than usual. 

The entire company had been accordingly divided 
into five or six divisions, each to carry on operations 
by itself, and each provided with its pack of dogs, 
that into whose company I had fallen — I speak here 
not so much of the dogs as of the men — being one 
of them. What had been the success of the other 
parties my informant could not tell. What I saw 
before me indicated, in a general way, the mixed 
fortune which his party had encountered. 

It had been appointed to them as their duty to 
search a swamp of no great extent, but very inacces- 
sible on account of the unusual depth of the mud and 
water, in many places over a man’s head, in the 
centre of which was a small island of firm land, be- 
lieved to be a favorite lurking-place of Wild Tom’s, 
who was supposed to know better than any body else 
the most convenient approaches to it. 

Within half a mile from- the swamp the dogs had 
started the lighter colored of the two prisoners, upon 
whom they came suddenly as he .lay concealed in the 
long grass, hoping to escape observation. As the 
party were close by, the dogs were prevented from 
tearing him, and he was made prisoner without 
trouble. The mud on his feet and legs, and the wet- 
ness of the scanty fragments of clothing that he wore, 
afforded pretty strong indications that he had lately 
come from the swamp island, which it was the object 


A FUGITIVE. 


297 


of the party to search. He was charged with this, 
but afiected the most stolid ignorance of the existence 
of any such island, or swamp either. When ques- 
tioned whence he came, and whom he belonged to, 
he acknowledged himself a runaway from a rice plan- 
tation below, who had lately wandered into this vi- 
cinity, of which he professed an entire ignorance, 
declaring himself to be dying of hunger, and not to 
have eaten any thing hardly for a week — a story to 
which his plump and comfortable aspect did not give 
much credit. He acknowledged having heard of 
Wild Tom, who indeed figured largely in the current 
legends, white and negro, of all that region ; but de- 
nied most positively ever having seen him, or knowing 
any thing of any other runaways. 

These protestations, however, did not satisfy, and 
to make him confess, he was tied up and whipped 
•till he fainted ; but while begging for mercy, he still 
insisted on the truth of his story, and that he had 
nothing further to tell. 

This experiment having failed, he was placed on the 
stump of a fallen tree, and a rope being put round his 
neck and fastened to a branch above, he was threat- 
ened with instant hanging if he did not confess. Still 
he continued dogged as ever, when one of the com- 
pany pushed him off the stump, and allowed him to 
swing till he grew black in the face. He was then 
placed back upon the stump, the rope loosened, and 
himself supported by the two or three slaves who ac- 
companied the party. At length beginning to recover 
himself, whether out of terror of death, or the confu- 
sion of his ideas and the destruction of his self-control 
by the pressure of blood upon the brain, he began to 
confess freely enough that he had just come from the 
swamp island, and that Wild Tom was there ; but he 
denied all knowledge of any other runaways, or that 
Wild Tom had any body with him. 

The prospect of capturing this celebrated outlaw, 
the glory thus to be gained, and the public service to 
be rendered, — not to mention the thousand dollars 


298 


MEMOIRS OF 


reward, — produced a great sensation in the company; 
though, till it had first been ascertained, by further in- 
quiries from the confessing prisoner, that his formida- 
ble chief had neither rifle, pistol, nor fire arms of any 
sort, no arms in fact but a knife, there did seem to be 
some little lack of vigor in proceeding with the busi- 
ness ; so my planter informant told me, lowering his 
voice, and casting a knowing glance, with a signifi- 
cant smile, at two or three of the fiercest looking fel- 
lows in the cavalcade before us — one in particular, 
who bestowed every now and then very savage looks 
on the mounted prisoner, and seemed with difficulty 
to keep his hands off him. 

To make all sure, eight or ten of the company 
were sent to patrol on horseback round the edges of 
the swamp, together with all the dogs but one, while 
five or six of the strongest and most resolute proposed 
to penetrate the interior, and to storm the island re- 
treat. The prisoner, with the rope still about his 
neck, the other end made fast to the waist of one of 
the stoutest of the company, was required to serve as 
guide ; and though he protested that he knew nothing 
in particular of the approaches to the island, he was 
threatened with instant death in case he did not con- 
duct them safely and expeditiously across. The fel- 
low, however, whether through ignorance or design, 
led them into very deep water, in some places fairly 
up to their necks, through which they were obliged to 
wade, holding their rifies and powder horns over their 
heads ; and in spite of every effort to keep him quiet, 
as the pa'rty drew near the island, he would insist on 
crying out, as if giving directions as to the passage, 
but, as was strongly suspected, with the real design of 
alarming his confederate. And, indeed, before the 
party could make good their footing on the island, he 
had already taken the alarm, and had plunged into 
the water on the other side. He had gained a con- 
siderable distance before he was seen, and as he 
dodged behind the great trees of the swamp, several 
rifle shots fired at him failed to take effect. In 


A FUGITIVE. 


299 


plunged the others in fresh pursuit, while the fugi- 
tive, engrossed by this danger behind, made the best 
of his way through the mud and water, till he gained 
the firm land on the other side of the swamp, where 
he encountered a new danger ; being seen by one of 
the scouts patrolling along the edge. As he bounded 
through the piny woods like a deer, a rifle shot 
grazed his side, and though it did not bring him 
down, yet it materially checked the swiftness of his 
flight. Four or five horsemen were soon upon his 
track. Snapdragon, the overseer, leading in the chase, 
soon came up with the flying negro ; and after vainly 
calling to him to yield, and firing his pistols with 
only partial effect, sprang from his horse, and at- 
tempted to seize him. Snapdragon was a powerful 
man, but he had now found his match. Wild Tom, 
if indeed it were really he, exhausted and wounded 
as he was, caught his assailant in his arms, and as 
they rolled upon the ground, the negro’s knife, was 
not long in finding its way to the overseer’s heart. 
But already the dogs and the other pursuers were 
upon him, and before he could disengage himself, he 
was made a prisoner, and securely bound. It was 
not long before the whole party was assembled, when 
some of the more violent proposed to revenge the 
dead overseer by putting the new prisoner to death 
on the spot. But the pleasure and glory of making 
a parade and exhibition of their prize, and the neces- 
sity, too, in order to secure the promised reward, to 
identify him as general Carter’s runaway, had stayed 
this summary procedure ; and it had been resolved 
forthwith to hasten to the village, which served as 
seat of justice for the county, to commit the prison- 
ers to jail. 

We were already in the near vicinity of the 
county seat, which proved to be a more consider- 
able village than usual, and from which, as if by 
some premonition of our coming, issued to meet us 
a most miscellaneous multitude ; of all colors, white, 
brown, and black; of every age, from infants scarcely 


300 


MEMOIRS OF 


able to go alone to old negroes with heads perfectly 
white, making their way, staff in hand ; and of 
almost every variety of equipment, from the well- 
dressed and well-mounted planters to little negi-o 
boys, perfectly naked, riding on sticks by way of 
horses, and shouting and screaming like so many 
witch urchins. 

Great time it was at the village of Eglinton, to 
which three or four other parties of the grand hunt 
had lately returned, not unsuccessfnl. As ^^e ap- 
proached the jail, — a little wretched brick building, 
containing a single room of ten or twelve feet square, 
with one little grated window, whence proceeded a 
steam and stench perceptible at a considerable dis- 
tance, — we found it crammed completely full of re- 
captured negroes, some of them severely wounded, 
tumbled pellmell into this Black Hole, which con- 
tained also two white women, committed on some 
charge of theft ; the slaves to be detained until their 
masters should come forward and pay the promised 
reward for their capture, together with certain fees 
and charges which the law allows in such cases. 

By way of refreshment after their fatigues, and in 
commemoration of their prowess, these successful 
men hunters had indulged in pretty copious draughts 
of peach brandy and whiskey ; and the dead body 
of the overseer, conveyed to the tavern and laid out 
upon the table, soon wrought up those who gazed 
at it into a state of furious indignation. 

As it was absolutely impossible to thrust any more 
prisoners into the jail, the two taken by the company 
to which I had attached myself, after being fettered 
and handcuffed, had been fastened by heavy chains 
to the iron bars of the prison window grating. 

It was only by the greatest efforts that I mastered 
my emotions, as, making my way among the crowd 
of blacks and whites that gathered around him, I 
approached the one supposed to be Wild Tom. I 
bent upon him a scrutinizing eye. He was greatly 
altered ; yet I did not fail to recognize the features, 


A FUGITIVE. 


301 


too strongly impressed upoA my mind ever to be 
forgotten, of my old friend and compatriot of twenty 
years before. I had expected it ; yet what an agony 
shot through my heart to know it! It was neces- 
sary, however, to control myself, and I did. I spoke* 
a few words, when, satisfied by my tone and look 
that I felt a sympathy for him, he laid aside, for a 
moment, that air of proud defiance with which, like 
a lion in the toils, he had glanced round on the 
crowd, and with a tone of entreaty begged me for a 
drink of water. By the promise of half a dollar, I 
induced one of the negroes to bring me a large 
gourd full; but just as the wounded prisoner was 
slowly raising it with his manacled arms to his lips, 
a well-dressed white man struck it with a stick which 
he held in his hand, and dashed it to the ground. 1 
could not refrain from some words of protest against 
this piece of wanton cruelty ; but the man with the 
stick turned upon me with a volley of oaths, in- 
quired who I was, that dared to comfort this infernal 
negro murderer, and by drawing the eyes of the 
company upon me as a stranger, began to make my 
position very uncomfortable. 

Just at this moment we heard a loud shout at the 
tavern door, at no great distance, followed up by a 
vigorous fight and a great uproar, as it seemed, be- 
tween two parties into which the crowd assembled 
there had become divided. This drew off all those 
who had collected about the prisoners, except the 
negro man who had brought the water, and who still 
stuck by, to keep me in remembrance of the half 
dollar ; and by the promise to double it, I succeed- 
ed in obtaining another gourd full, from which my 
poor captured friend was enabled without interrup- 
tion to quench his feverish thirst. As he dropped 
the empty gourd, he turned to me an eye of ac- 
knowledgment. Thank Heaven, that in his distress 
and extremity, I was enabled to do for him bven so 
much as this ! 

Incapable as I was of affording any succor, I felt 

26 


802 


MEMOIRS OF 


an invincible desire to make myself known to him. 
I felt, indeed, that to his noble and generous soul it 
would afford a glow of satisfaction, even in the depth 
of his own distress, to know of the welfare of his old 
"friend and confederate. I stepped close to him, and, 
placing my hand on his arm, I said, in a whisper, 
“ Thomas, do you know me ? Remember Loosa- 
hatchie ! Remember Ann, how she was murdered, and 
how you vowed vengeance over her grave ! Remem- 
ber Martin, the overseer, and how we buried him and 
the bloodhound together! Remember our parting, 
when I went north and you went south ! I am 
Archy; do you know me?” 

How keenly he fixed his eyes upon me as I began ! 
With what devouring glances he gazed at me as I 
went on ! I, too, was greatly altered — far more than 
he ; but before I had spoken my name, I saw that he 
knew me. But in an instant, his eye glancing from 
me, that momentary gleam of joyous surprise which 
had lighted up his face passed suddenly away, and his 
features again resumed that sullen look of defiance, 
which seemed to say to his captors, “ Do your worst ; 
I am ready.” 

I felt at that same moment a hand rudely laid on 
my shoulder, while a voice, which I recognized as that 
of the same man who had dashed the calabash of 
water from Thomas’s grasp, exclaimed, with a volley 
of oaths, “ What the devil are you doing here in close 
confab with this murderer ? I tell you, stranger, you 
don’t leave here without giving an account of your- 
self! ” 

At the same time a number of men, rushing up 
to Thomas, began to unfasten the chains from the 
prison bars, and to conduct him towards the door of 
the tavern. 

The fight had been between the more drunken and 
infuriated portion of the company, who, enraged at 
the sight of the dead overseer, wished to try and 
execute Thomas at once, and those -who had wished 
to await the arrival of general Carter, for whom a 


A FUGITIVE. 


303 


messenger had been sent, and to delay final proceed- 
ings till the prisoner had first been identified as the 
veritable Wild Tom, and general Carter’s property, 
lest otherwise there might be some difficulty in recov- 
ering the promised reward. 

The more violent and drunken party had, however, 
prevailed ; a court of three freeholders had been or- 
ganized on the spot, and Thomas, again surrounded 
by a rabble of blacks and whites, was now brought 
before this august tribunal. I was myself at the 
same time taken into custody as a suspected person, 
with an intimation that my case should be attended 
to as soon as that of the negro was disposed of. 

“ Whom do you belong to ? ” Such was the first 
question which the honorable court addressed to the 
prisoner. 

“ I belong,” answered Thomas, with much solem- 
nity, “to the God who made us all!” A reply so 
unusual was received by some with a stare, by others 
with a laugh, redoubled at the repartee by one of the 
judges, “ To God, ah ! I rather reckon you belong 
to the devil ! Any how, he’ll very soon have you.” 

To reiterated demands as to whose property he 
was, Thomas steadily replied that he was a free man ; 
when the same witty judge raised a new laugh by 
requesting him to show his free papers. 

The court, after hearing a witness or two, pro- 
nounced him guilty of the murder of the overseer, after 
which he was asked, with a sort of mock solemnity, 
if he had any thing to say why sentence of death 
should not be passed upon him. 

“ Go on,” said the indignant culprit; “hang me, kill 
me, do your will ! I was held a slave for the best 
years of my life.- My wife was flogged to death be- 
fore my eyes. As a free man, you have hunted me 
with bloodhounds, and shot at me with rifles, and 
placed a price upon my head. Long have I fooled 
you, and paid you back in your own coin. That 
white man to-day was not the first who has found me 
too much for him. One by one, two by two, three by 


304 


MEMOIRS OF 


three, I defy and would whip the whole of you , but 
the whole dozen, mounted and armed, with dogs to 
boot, were too much for one poor black man, with 
nothing but his feet, his hands, and his knife. They 
have not always been too much ; but I am getting 
old. Better die now, while I have strength and cour- 
age to defy your worst, than fall into your hands a 
broken-down old man.” 

These words of defiance wrought up the assembled 
mob of planters and overseers to a fury perfectly dev- 
ilish. “ Hanging is too good for him,” some of them 
cried out; and presently the awful cry was raised, 
“ Burn him ! burn him ! ” No sooner was the hor- 
rible idea suggested, than volunteers were found to 
prepare to carry it into execution. It was in vain 
that I, and indeed two or three of those who had 
been engaged in the capture of Thomas, and among 
them the planter by whose side I had ridden, and 
from v/hom I had heard the story of it, remonstrated 
against this horrible and illegal cruelty. The same 
brutal scoundrel who had dashed the water from 
Thomas’s lips now stood forward as the leader and 
manager of this new atrocity. It was necessary, he 
said, with the country agitated by abolition incendia- 
ries, some of them, he repeated, — and here he cast a 
malignant glance at me, — in communication with 
this very outlaw, now that they had him in their 
power, to make an example of him. This Wild Tom 
had been the terror of the whole neighborhood for 
years. The stories of his exploits, circulating among 
the negroes, had done infinite damage, and might 
make many imitators. It was necessary, therefore, to 
counteract this impression by having his career ter- 
minate in a way to inspire awe and terror. 

A pile of light wood was soon collected, and the 
victim of slaveholding vengeance was placed in the 
midst of it. 

The pile was then lighted, and the smoke and 
flames began to wreathe above his head. But even 


A FUGITIVE. 


305 


yet unsubdued, he looked round on his shouting tor- 
mentors with a smile of contemptuous defiance. 

Unable to endure the horrid spectacle, I attempted 
to rush from among the crowd ; but I found myself 
watched, and directly I was seized, and, by orders of 
the self-appointed master of ceremonies of this hor- 
rible scene, conveyed close to the burning pile, as one 
on whom the spectacle of such an execution might 
make a salutary impression. 

Thomas recognized me, — at least I thought so, — 
from amid the flames, and he lifted up his arm, as if 
to bid me farewell. 

O, the horrible agony of that moment! Had I 
myself been in the place of my friend, could I have 
suffered more? My heartstrings seemed to crack; 
the blood rushed in a torrent to my brain. Nature 
could not endure it. I dropped fainting and senseless 
to the ground. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

When I recovered my senses, I found myself on 
a bed, with four or five black women about me, apply- 
ing various restoratives ; and, as I opened my eyes, 
they burst out with great shouts of delight. 

I found afterwards that, during my fainting fit, my 
pockets, as well as my saddle-bags, had been thor- 
oughly searched, in hopes of obtaining some proofs 
to corroborate the suspicions raised against me by 
the sympathy I had exhibited. 

But the only papers found were some letters of 
credit and introduction addressed from Liverpool to 
mercantile houses of established character in Charles- 
ton and New Orleans, in which I was described as 
an English traveller, on a tour partly of business and 
partly of pleasure. 

Upon the production and public reading of these 
letters, a great difference of opinion had sprung up 
26 ^ 


306 


MEMOIRS OF 


among the sovereigns assembled at Eglinton, act- 
ing in my case as a committee of vigilance with full 
powers, of the extent of which so terrible an instance 
had just been exhibited before my eyes. 

The mere fact that I was an Englishman went 
very far with many of the ruder sort to confirm the 
supposition that I must be an abolitionist and a con- 
spirator. The draught of water which I had persisted 
in procuring for Thomas was regarded by several as 
a very suspicious circumstance. The words I had 
privately addressed to him, and the appearance of 
some understanding between him and myself, weighed 
very heavily against me. The remonstrances I had 
made against the cruel death to which he had just 
been subjected were set down as, at the very best, 
a great piece of impertinent interference — especially 
coming from an Englishman. 

The same ruffian who had already twice interfered 
between Thomas and myself, and who had caused 
my seizure as a suspected person, now assumed the 
part of chief prosecutor. He argued, with great zeal, 
that I must be an emissary of the English abolition- 
ists, and perhaps of the English government, sent 
out on purpose to stir up a slave revolt, and, from 
what had passed between me and Wild Tom, ap- 
parently in correspondence with that dangerous out- 
law, and the least that could be done, in his opinion, 
with any proper regard for the public safety, was to 
give me a sound flogging, and to ride me on a rail 
out of the county. 

This proposal was very favorably received; and 
nothing but the strenuous exertions of the planter 
whose acquaintance I had made on the road saved 
me from falling a victim to it. As I had entered 
Eglinton in his company, he seemed to consider me, 
in some sort, as under his protection ; and he accord- 
ingly took up my cause with no little zeal. My over- 
taking him on the road — so he argued — was a mat- 
ter of pure accident ; my interference on behalf of the 
bloody murderer, upon whom such just, proper, and 


A FUGITIVE. 


307 


signal vengeance had been taken, was only a piece 
of misjudged humanity. It was not to be supposed 
that a stranger, and an Englishman, could enter 
into all of their feelings. While adopting all proper 
means promptly to suppress and punish all inter- 
ference with the domestic institutions of the south, 
for which nobody was more zealous than he, they 
ought to be careful how they overstripped the limits 
of reason and prudence. If I had been only a north- 
erner, it would be safe enough to maltreat me to any 
extent, even to burn me alive, as they just had done 
the “ nigger.” Those pitiful Yankees might be 
whipped, kicked, and otherwise punished, to any 
extent, with reason or without, and there would not 
be the least danger of any rumpus about it, for fear 
it might diminish the trade with the south. But to 
meddle with an Englishman was quite another affair. 
England did not allow any of her people to be mal- 
treated with impunity. It was apparent from my let- 
ters that J was a person who had money and friends, 
and those concerned in any irregular violence inflicted 
upon me might find themselves called upon to an- 
swer for it. To be sure, the United States could 
whip the British again, as they had done in the last 
war. But still, in the present excited state of the 
slave population, a war with England was not ex- 
actly desirable. Such, as he afterwards informed 
me, was the general tenor of the argument by which 
my planter friend had saved me from the clutches of 
the vigilance committee. Had he or they suspected 
my true history, how diflerent the result might have 
been ! 

While this discussion had been going on, I had 
been conveyed to the tavern, still in a senseless con- 
dition, where the negro women, with their usual good 
nature, had exerted themselves, as I have mentioned 
already, for my recovery. My planter friend soon 
made his appearance. He saw that I was not yet 
in a condition to resume my journey; and as the vil- 
lage, and especially the tavern and its neighborhood, 


308 


MEMOIRS OF 


still continued a scene of drunken uproar, such as 
made my further stay there neither conducive to my 
health nor perhaps compatible with my safety, he 
insisted upon taking me to his own house. This 
invitation, under the circumstances, I was glad to 
accept; and keeping my room for three or four days, 
I gradually recovered, and grew strong again. 

My host, who of course was without any clew 
to the special interest which I had in the death of 
Thomas, seemed rather surprised at the serious ef- 
fect which that incident had produced, upon me ; nor 
could he otherwise explain it except by supposing 
that alarm for my own personal safety had a great 
share in it. He therefore exerted all his eloquence, 
as well to reassure me personally as to vindicate the 
reputation of the southern states against any conclu- 
sions which I might hastily draw. He ,assured me, 
upon his honor, that such scenes as I had witnessed 
were not by any means common. Once in a while 
the indignation of the people, roused to the highest 
pitch by some atrocious villany on the part of some 
negro, did vent itself in the way I had witnessed. 
But this burning alive was quite an exceptional cir- 
cumstance. He had never known more than two or 
three other instances of it, and those provoked by 
some horrible misdemeanor, such as the murder of a 
white man, or the rape of a white woman. He hoped 
I should be candid enough to admit that a few such 
instances could not be considered as seriously de- 
tracting from the claims of the southern states to 
stand in the highest ranks of civilization and Chris- 
tianity. The fact was, the negroes were such a set 
of unmitigated savages, that occasional examples 
were necessary to inspire them with a wholesome 
degree of dread. 

1 was not at present in a state of mind to conduct 
an argument with much advantage. Besides, not- 
withstanding my host’s personal kindness towards 
me, I very soon discovered, what the circumstances 
under which I had first met him might have given 


A FUGITIVE. 


309 


me sufficient assurance of, that upon the subject of 
the evils or wrongs of slavery, he was perfectly im- 
penetrable. Remembering, therefore, the evangelical 
injunction of not casting pearls before swine’s feet, 
I contented myself with letting him understand that, 
however it might be in America, which I freely admit- 
ted to be a great country, the practices of slave hunts 
and negro burning were wholly incompatible with 
my English ideas of civilization or Christianity. 
This statement of my sentiment was received by 
my host with a gracious smile, a condescending 
wave of the hand, and the observation — evidently 
intended to be apologetical for my heresies, and ex- 
culpatory of them — that the prejudices of John Bull, 
upon some points, were unaccountable. 

These mutual explanations occurred very soon after 
reaching the planter’s house. As hopeless, apparently, 
of convicting me, as I was of making any impression 
upon him, he allowed the subject to drop ; and during 
the remainder of my stay wdth him, we conversed 
upon indifferent matters only. As soon as I felt able 
to ride, I hastened to resume my journey — not with- 
out a friendly warning from my host to be cautious 
how I gave utterance to my English prejudices. 
When travelling in Turkey, — so he remarked, with- 
out seeming to be aware how little creditable the 
comparison was to his state of South Carolina, — it 
was best to do as they did in Turkey, or, at least, to 
let the Turks do as they chose, without interference 
or observation. 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

* Shortly after arriving at Charleston, which I 
reached without any further adventure worthy of 
note, I waited upon the mercantile gentlemen to 
whom I had letters of credit. Upon entering the 
counting room, I found another stranger there, whom, 


310 


MEMOIRS OF 


from his bearing and appearance, I recognized at 
once as the master of some merchant ship. He was 
speaking with great vehemence, and apparently com- 
plaining of some injury. 

I gathered from what he said, that his vessel be- 
longed to Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, and 
that, having encountered a severe storm while on a 
voyage to the Havana, he had been obliged to put 
into Charleston to refit. Not only was his cook a 
colored man, but of the eight sailors, by whom the 
brig was manned, no less than five were colored, all, 
as the captain said, natives of Massachusetts, born 
on Cape Cod, and as able seamen as ever trod a deck. 

These colored men — so the captain was complain- 
ing in pretty hard terms — had just been taken out 
of his ship and carried off to jail; and he wished to 
know of the Charleston merchants, who, it seemed, 
were the correspondents of his owners, whether there 
was no security against this outrage,. as inconvenient 
to him as it was injurious to the men. , 

“ Why,” said the merchant to whom he addressed 
himself, with a significant glance at his partner, 
and a mischievous sort of a look at the captain, 
“there has just arrived here, I understand, a commis- 
sioner from Massachusetts, appointed by the governor 
of that state, under a resolve of the legislature, to 
bring this very question of the imprisonment of col- 
ored seamen of that state to a legal issue. The com- 
missioner is staying at such a hotel,” naming the 
very one at which I had put up ; “that is, unless he 
has been turned away, for notice has already been 
issued to all the hotel keepers not to harbor him. 
You had better apply to him, and quick too, or you 
may not find him. He is the very man for you, and 
yours is the very case for him. Try and see what he 
and the United States laws, and the state of Massa- 
chusetts, will do for you.” 

The ironical, sneering tone in which this was said 
was evident enough to me ; but the honest sea cap- 
tain to whom it was addressed seemed to take it all 


A FUGITIVE. 


811 


in good earnest, and hastily started off in pursuit of 
the commissioner. 

Having arranged my business matters with these 
merchants, and provided for meeting such drafts 
as might be made on behalf of my North Carolina 
protege^ I ventured to inquire whether the arrest of 
which I had just heard the captain complaining was 
really made under any law. 

“ O, yes, certainly,” was the answer. “ All ne- 
groes and colored people, who arrive here on ship- 
board, are taken at once to jail, and kept there till the 
ship is ready to depart, when, by paying their board, 
jail fees, and other costs, they are allowed to go in 
her.” 

“And suppose they can’t pay,” said I. 

“ O, the captain, you know, must have his men, 
and he pays for them.” 

“ But suppose the captain does not choose to 
pay.” 

“ Why, in that case, the fees are raised by selling 
the men at auction.” 

“ Sell free men at auction,” said I, “ driven into 
your ports by stress of weather, and imprisoned mere- 
ly for not being white ! ” 

There was something in the tone in which I spoke 
that brought a slight tinge of color into the mer- 
chant’s cheek. He endeavored to apologize for this 
law by suggesting the great danger of insurrection, 
if free colored men, from the north or elsewhere, 
should be permitted to come in contact with a slave 
population far exceeding the whites in numbers, as 
was the case in Charleston and the neighborhood. 

“ But what is it,” L asked, “ about this Massa- 
chusetts commissioner, to whom you referred the 
captain ? ” 

“ Why,” said the merchant, with a contemptuous 
sort of a smile, “ the Boston ship owners, finding 
these prison fees and expenses a charge upon their 
ships, have all at once been seized with a mighty 
strong sympathy for negroes’ rights, — if you want to 


312 


MEMOIRS OF 


stir a Boston man up, just touch him in the pocket, 
— and so they have got this commissioner sent on 
here to try this question in the courts. They pretend 
that South Carolina has no right to make a law 
for the imprisonment of free persons from Massachu- 
setts, not charged with any crime, but merely from a 
general suspicion on account of their color.” 

“ And when is the case likely to come to trial ? ” 
I asked. 

“ Come to trial ! ” said the Carolina merchant, roll- 
ing up the whites of his eyes ; “ and do you suppose 
we are going to allow the case to be tried ? ” 

“ And why not ? ” I asked ; “ and how can you 
help it ? ” 

“ Ten to one,” he answered, the cause, if tried, 
would go against us. The law in question has al- 
ready been pronounced unconstitutional by one of the 
United States judges, and he too a South Carolina 
man. But whether unconstitutional or not, we think 
it necessary, and the niggers and the Yankee mer- 
chants must learn to put up with it. As to helping 
it, that is a very simple matter. The commissioner 
from Massachusetts has already had notice to take 
himself off, and all the hotel keepers, as I mentioned 
to the captain, not to entertain him at their peril. 
We shan’t tolerate any such abolitionist spies and 
conspirators here in Charleston. In fact, if the old 
gentleman had not had the Yankee shrewdness to 
bring a daughter of his along with him by way of 
protector, he might before this time have found him- 
self tumbled out of the city, neck and heels, comfort- 
ably dressed in a coat of tar and feathers. There is 
not a lawyer here who would dare bring a suit for 
him. Most of our merchants are northern men, — I 
am one myself,” said my informant, — “ but we 'are 
all Carolinians in feeling ; in fact, if we expect to 
live here, we have to be so, and I shall be on hand to 
do my part, and if the old gentleman hesitates about 
it, to help him in finding his way out of the city. 
The matter has been settled at a public meeting. 


A FUGITIVE. 313 

He is not to be allowed to sleep here another 
night.” 

“ And what do you imagine the state of Massachu- 
setts and the Boston merchants will say at being so 
unceremoniously kicked out of the court house door- 
way ? ” 

“ O, as to the merchants, they will probably do 
like a well-bred Carolina negro, who takes off his hat 
when he gets a kick for his insolence, and grins out, 
with a low bow, a ‘ Thank ye, master.’ Kicking 
a^ees quite as well with Yankee merchants as < 
with niggers. And both niggers and merchants are 
quite used to it I As to the state of Massachusetts, ' 
so long as that state continues to be controlled, as at 
present, by the mercantile and manufacturing influ- 
ence, there is no danger of any trouble from her. 
She will pocket the insult very quietly. The politi- 
cal leaders in Massachusetts, of both parties, are ex- 
ceedingly anxious to hire themselves out as negro 
drivers to the south. What would become of Boston 
or Massachusetts without the southern trade ? As 
the poor Yankees live on the crumbs which fall from 
our table, they are not to be particular* about the 
terms on which they are allowed to pick them up. 

Of course, if they are allowed to pick up the crumbs, 
they must expect now and then to eat a little dirt.” 

My Carolina acquaintance seemed to make a rath- 
er low estimate of the spirit of Massachusetts ; yet 
when I recollected whsft I had myself seen and heard 
in passing through Boston a few weeks before, I 
could not but admit that this calculation upon mer- 
cantile servility and cupidity was a pretty safe one. 

As Ij-eached the hotel, on my return from the mer- 
chant’s, I found a great crowd collected in the streets. 

A carriage stood at the door, and presently, a tall, 
white-haired old gentleman appeared, with a lady 
leaning on his arm, very ceremoniously attended by 
half a dozen gentlemen, in white kid gloves, whom I 
afterwards understood to be a detachment of the 
vigilance committee, specially appointed to escort the 


314 


MEMOIRS OF 


Massachusetts commissioner out of the city. The 
commissioner and his daughter were placed in the 
carriage, which drove off amid the shouts, jeers, and 
execrations of the assembled multitude ; and so far as 
I have heard, this is the last that Massachusetts has 
ever done towards vindicating the rights of her im- 
prisoned seamen. 

English seamen, as I have been told, soriietimes 
suffer under the same law. If such are the facts. 
Great Britain will no doubt find the means of bring- 
ing these insolent slaveholders to reason ; and perhaps, 
through her agency, the timid and trembling northern 
states may sooner or later regain a free entry into 
the port of Charleston. It would indeed be a curi- 
ous circumstance if British aid and interference 
should be found the only means of securing to the 
northern merchants and seamen, as against the dom- 
ineering insolence of their southern masters, their 
rights under the constitution of the .United States. 
Such an interference on behalf of humanity and 
sailors’ rights might almost pass as an offset to the 
wrongs formerly inflicted by Great Britain in the im- 
pressment of American seamen. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

Hitherto, during my journey southward, the excite- 
ment of the various adventures through which I had 
passed, as well as the occupation which I had found 
for my thoughts in revisiting the scenes of my youth, 
under circumstances so changed, had kept my mind 
from dwelling upon the hopelessness of the search 
which I had undertaken. Augusta, in the state of 
Georgia, was the last point to which, in my researches 
years before, I had been able to trace my wife 
and child. It was now some twenty years since 
they had entered that town as part of a slave coflle 


A FUGITIVE. 


315 


destined for the south-western market. This was 
the last trace I had of them. To Augusta, therefore, 
I now directed my course, not, however, without the 
most depressing feelings, and a painful conscious- 
ness that when I reached that place, I should be 
without the slightest clew to guide me any farther. 

I left Charleston in the stage coach for Augusta, 
long before daylight. As the day began to dawn, I 
found myself one of four passengers. At first we 
were pretty silent, each trying to sleep in his corner, 
or else eyeing his fellow-passengers, as if wishing to 
ascertain their character before making any advances 
towards acquaintance. At breakfast we began to 
thaw out a little, and by dinner time we were quite 
sociable. 

It presently appeared that two of the passengers 
were northern men ; one of them the editor of 
a New York newspaper, the other a Boston agent, 
employed in the purchase of cotton for some mer- 
cantile houses or manufacturing companies of that 
city. The third passenger was a person of very 
striking appearance, with a face of great intelligence, 
a dark eye that seemed to penetrate you at a glance, 
a captivating smile, manners exceedingly soft and 
winning, and something in his whole bearing that 
indicated a man accustomed to mingle freely in so- 
ciety. 

He was evidently taken by the other two for a 
wealthy planter, and he neither did nor said any 
thing to contradict the assumption, receiving with an 
air of gracious condescension the court which they 
paid to him. 

After a variety of topics, the conversation, as is 
common in America, settled down upon politics, and 
especially upon the nomination lately made for presi- 
dent and vice-president by a convention of the demo- 
cratic or Jackson party assembled at Baltimore. Mr 
Van Buren, the nominee of that convention for the 
presidency, was very sharply criticized by the two 
northern men, on the ground, principally, that in a 


316 


MEMOIRS OF 


convention for revising the state constitution ot New 
York, he had been in favor of allowing the blacks to 
vote. The planter, or supposed planter, adopted, in 
the course of the conversation, a non-committal course, 
which, according to the criticisms made on Mr Van Bu- 
ren’s character, might almost have rivalled the adroit- 
ness of that gentleman himself. The nomination of 
Mr Richard M. Johnson for the vice-presidency seemed 
to give still less satisfaction ; indeed, it was mentioned 
that a portion of the members of the convention by 
which it was made had been greatly dissatisfied at it, 
and had refused to give it their support. Some hints 
that were dropped excited my curiosity as to the 
grounds of their opposition, and I followed up the 
matter by a good many ques^ons. The opposition to 
Mr Johnson was made, I Was told, by the delegation 
from Virginia. They did not object to the political 
orthodoxy of Mr Johnson, who, indeed, was a dem- 
ocrat of the first water, — to say the truth, so the 
New York editor told me, considerably too much of 
a democrat to suit the tastes of the Virginians. He 
was not respectable enough for them ; quite too vul- 
gar in his tastes and habits ; and they had insisted 
upon nominating a certain Mr Rives in his place. 

Upon my inquiring more specifically in what the 
vulgarity of Mr Johnson consisted, it came out that 
he entertained in his house a number of black and 
brown wives, and was the father of a family of col- 
ored children. 

Very much to the surprise of my two northern fel- 
low-passengers, who exhausted all their rhetoric jn 
condemnation of Mr Johnson’s coarseness and vul- 
garity, — a practical amalgamator for vice-president ! 
— the supposed planter avowed himself a supporter 
of the Van Buren-Johnson nomination ; and he under- 
took to offer some apologies for the latter gentleman. 

“ The horror of you northern people,” he said, nod- 
ding his head to the Boston cotton broker, “ and the 
hue and cry you have lately raised on the s^ibject of 
amalgamation _and the intermixture of the races, may 


A FUGITIVE. 


317 


be all very sincere, but for us in the south, with so 
many living evidences of our frailty multiplying about 
us in every direction, to attempt to make a bugbear 
of amalgamation, or to wink it into non-existence, 
by any ostrich-like process of sticking our heads into 
the sand, and refusing to recognize as a fact what 
every body knows, and what is testified to by the 
varying complexion of every considerable family of 
slaves in the country, is certainly a very great ab- 
surdity. 

“ For my part, I like to see a little consistency. 
We southerners defend slavery because, as we say, 
it is a law of nature that when two races are brought 
together in the same community,' the stronger and 
nobler race should predominate over the weaker. 
But if, in such a case, it is the law of nature that the 
men of the weaker race should be made slaves of by 
those of the stronger, is it not just as much^lso a law 
of nature that the women of the weaker race should 
become concubines to the men of the stronger? 
Does not it always so operate ? and is not that the 
means which nature takes gradually to extinguish 
the inferior race, and to substitute an improved, 
mixed race in the place of it? 

“ Some of us undertake to defend slavery out of the 
Bible, and to justify it by the example of the patri- 
archs. Very well ; if the example of the patriarchs 
is to justify me in holding slaves, will it not also 
justify our democratic candidate for the vice-presi- 
dency in raising up to himself a family by the help 
of his maid servants ? 

“ In fact, sir,” said he, turning to me, who had taken 
an early opportunity to avow myself an Englishman, 
“ it is precisely because our democratic candidate for 
the vice-presidency follows the example of the patri- 
archs a little too closely, that all this hue and cry 
is raised against him. It is not his taste for black 
women, it is not his family of colored children, — 
perhaps these innocent gentlemen here from the north 
know nothing about the matter, but, if so, any white 


318 


MEMOIRS OF 


boy in the city of Charleston of sixteen years old and 
upwards could enlighten them, — it is not these Uttle 
peccadilloes that reflect anything upon Mr Johnson’s 
character. They are as much parts of our domestic 
institutions here at the south as the use of the cow- 
hide; just as natural to us southerners as chewing 
tobacco ; just about as common, and just as little 
thought of. But the pinch is here. Mr. Johnson, 
being a bachelor, with no white wife or white chil- 
dren to control him, and, withal, one of the best-na- 
tured men in the world, must needs so far imitate the 
example of the patriarchs as actually to recognize a 
number of colored daughters as his own children. 
He has raised and educated them in his own house. 
He has even made efforts to introduce them into re- 
spectable society. The spirit of the Kentucky women 
— the women, you know, are all natural aristocrats — 
defeated j^im in that; but he has procured white hus- 
bands for them, and their children, under the law of 
Kentucky, will be legally white, and entitled to all 
the rights and privileges of white persons. It is 
this in which the scandal of Mr Johnson’s con- 
duct consists. If, instead of acting the affectionate 
father by his daughters, he had quietly shipped them 
all off to New Orleans to be sold at auction, to be 
made concubines of by the purchasers, instead of 
marrying them respectably, and securing for their 
children the full privileges of Kentucky citizenship, 
we should never have heard that brought against 
him, either north or south, as a reason why he ought 
not to be vice-president. I do not imagine that either 
of our northern friends here would have made the 
least objection to him on that score ! ” 

“ But you don’t undertake to say,” stammered out 
the Boston cotton broker, “ that any respectable man 
at the south does that ? That, I thought, was one of 
the slanders of the abolitionists.” 

“ I do undertake to say,” was the answer, “ that a 
man may do it without any tarnish to his respecta- 
bility, and it he should apply the next day after to 


A FUGITIVE. 


319 


be admitted a member of any of our most pious 
Christian churches, that would never be made a 
ground for refusing him. Church discipline is mighty 
strict in some matters. I once knew a man excom- 
municated from a Presbyterian church for sending 
his children to a dancing school ; but I never yet 
heard of any southern church that ventured to in- 
quire into the paternity of slave children, or the rela- 
tions of female slaves towards their owners. The 
violent death of a slave by the hand of the owner 
may, under certain circumstances, lead to a judicial 
investigation more or less strict; but, short of that, a 
Turkish harem is not more safe from impertinent 
intrusions and inquiries, whether civil or ecclesias- 
tical, than one of our slaveholding families. If hon- 
est Dick Johnson had not acknowledged those chil- 
dren to be his, do you suppose that any body — 
unless perhaps by way of joke — would have ven- 
tured to charge them upon him ? His offence consists 
not in having the children, but in owning them.” 

“ I am afraid,” said the New York editor, “ you 
will give our English friend here,” nodding at me, 
“rather a low idea of southern morals. There are 
some little family secrets that ought not to be spoken 
of before every body.” 

“ Pity,” said the other, “ you had not thought of 
that before. In that case, you might have let Dick 
Johnson alone. All I insist upon is, that, bating the 
lack of a little hypocrisy and grimace, and making 
due allowance for a little extra good nature, he is not 
so very much worse than his neighbors.” 

“ But,” retorted the New York editor, “ as a south- 
ern man and a slaveholder, can you undertake to say 
that such conduct as his — this attempt to put blacks 
and whites on an equality — is not dangerous to the 
institutions of the country ? ” 

“ Not so dangerous by half,” was the prompt reply, 
“ as the attempting to comipingle and confound with 
the mass of the slaves the children of free fathers, 
inheriting from the fathers’ side a spirit not very 


320 


•MEMOIRS OE 


consistent with the condition of servitude. What 
do you think is likely to be the consequence of hav- 
ing among our slaves the descendants of such men, 
for instance, as Thomas Jefierson ? ” 

“ Thomas Jefferson ! nonsense ! ” exclaimed the 
New Yorker. 

“ Nonsense or not, I can only say, that I once saw 
a very decent, bright mulatto woman, at least three 
quarters white, sold at auction, who claimed to be a 
granddaughter of that famous ex-president; and, as 
far as resemblance goes, her face and figure sustained 
her pretensions. At any rate, the woman brought 
an extra hundred dollars or so beyond her otherwise 
market value, as the purchaser facetiously observed, 
on account of the goodness of the breed.” 

The two northern passengers seemed a little shocked 
at this story, the force of w’hich they attempted to evade 
by insisting that the woman must have been an im- 
postor, and that perhaps this idea was got up for the 
very purpose of enlivening the sale. 

“ Well,” said the ather with a laugh, “that cer- 
tainly is very possible. Gouge and McGrab were un- 
questionably shrewd fellows, and in the way of trade 
up to almost any thing.” 

My interest in the conversation was here redoubled. 
Gouge and McGrab ! McGrab was the name of 
the very slave trader by whom my wife and child had 
been purchased and transported to Augusta, and it 
was as his property that my agent formerly employed 
in that business had obtained the last trace of them. 

I hastened to inquire when and where it was that 
my fellow-passenger had witnessed this sale of Jeffer- 
son’s alleged granddaughter. 

“ O, at Augusta, in Georgia, some twenty years 
since,” was the answer. 

“ And pray,” I asked, “who is this McGrab that 
you speak of? I have an interest in getting some 
trace of a slave dealer of that name.” 

He readily replied that McGrab was a Scotchman 
by birth, but a South Carolinian by education, engaged 


A FUGITIVE. 


321 


some years ago, along with his partner Gouge, in the 
supply of the southern market with slaves. The head- 
quarters of their traffic was at Augusta. Me Grab 
scoured the more northern slave states, attending 
sheriffs’ and executors’ sales, and driving such private 
bargains as he could to keep up the supply, which he 
forwarded from time to time to his partner Gouge, 
who attended chiefly to the business of selling at 
Augusta. But the partnership had been many years 
dissolved, and McGrab himself a long time dead. 
Gouge was still living at Augusta, retired from busi- 
ness, and one of the wealthiest men in the place. 

“ I ought to know something,” he added aside to 
me, “ of these men and their business, for in my 
younger days I was three or four years their clerk and 
bookkeeper, and for a while their partner. I owe old 
Gouge a grudge, and if you have any claim against 
them, and I can any way assist you, you shall be 
welcome to my services.” 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

The stage coach stopped for dinner at a dirty, 
uncomfortable tavern, the management of which 
seemed to be altogether in the hands of the slaves, 
of whom there was a great superabundance, the 
landlord being a sort of gentleman guest in his own 
house. The head servant of the establishment, a 
large, portly, soft-spoken mulatto, but very shabbily 
and dirtily dressed, seemed, for some reason or other, 
— perhaps from my politeness to him, — to take 
quite a fancy to me. After dinner he called me aside, 
and inquired if I was acquainted with the gentleman 
who had sat opposite to me at the table. This was 
the supposed planter, my stage companion, in his 
younger days, as he had informed us, clerk and book- 
keeper, and afterwards partner of Gouge and McGrab. 


822 


MEMOIRS OF 


« No/’ I answered, “ I did not know him except as my 
fellow-traveller from Charleston ; I should like very 
well to know his name.” 

“ As to his name,” said my mulatto friend, “ it 
would not be so easy to tell that. He goes by a good 
many names. Most every time he comes this way 
he has a new one. Have a care of him, master; he’s 
a gambler. I thought I’d tell you, lest you might get 
cheated by him.” 

As this information seemed to come from pure good 
will on the part of my informant, I had no reason to 
distrust its correctness. I knew very well that gam- 
bling was not only practised in these southern slave 
states, as it is in the overgrown capitals of Europe, 
as a means of relieving the ennui of idleness, but that 
here, as there, a regular class of professional gamblers 
had sprung into existence, who lived by fleecing the 
unskilful and unwary. It was by no means unusual 
for members of that fraternity to have all the external 
marks of gentlemen ; nor was there any improbabili- 
ty in the suggestion that my new acquaintance be- 
longed to it. 

Though he had inclined to differ, in the course of 
the morning, from our two northern companions on 
some questions of politics and morality, I could not 
but admire the grace and art with which he contrived, 
in the course of the afternoon, to worm himself into 
their confidence. When the stage coach stopped, for 
the night, at another tavern still more dirty, uncom- 
fortable, and every way untidy, — if that could well 
be, — than the one at which we had dined, he pro- 
posed, after supper, a game of cards by way of whiling 
away the time. The other two were ready enough 
for it, and the three were soon busy at the game, in 
which they were joined by one or two planters of the 
vicinity, who happened to be lounging about the 
ho.use. For myself, I positively declined to join them, 
declaring that I never touched a card, and never 
played at any game for money ; and perceiving from 
my manner that I was quite inflexible on that point. 


A FUGITIVE. 


323 


the alleged gambler remarked, with some significance, 
that I had taken a very wise and safe resolution for 
a stranger travelling through the southern states. 

After watching the game for some time, I retired 
to bed ; and rising pretty early the next morning, since 
the journey was to be rene'wed at five o’clock, I 
found them still at it : the two northern dupes hag- 
gard with want of sleep, and their very lengthened 
laces, distorted with ill-suppressed anxiety and suffer- 
ing, seeming to have grown ten years older in that 
single night. They bore, in fact, but a distant resem- 
blance to the two spruce, sleek gentlemen with whom 
I had ridden the day before. The other seemed as 
fresh and self-possessed as at the moment he had sat 
down ; and as I entered the room, he took up and pock- 
eted, with a graceful nonchalance that was quite 
admirable, the last stak^, and as it proved, too, the 
last money of his two companions. 

Having sat down, as I afterwards learned, with 
only ten dollars in his pocket, as his whole means 
and ^tock in trade, he had jnade a good night of it. 
In the morning he had not less than two thousand, 
besides a fine mulatto boy of fifteen or sixteen, whom 
one of the planters had made over to him by way of 
squaring accounts. 

Finding our two companions quite drained, he in- 
sisted upon paying their tavern bills himself, and upon 
lending each of them*fifty dollars, as a fund to go upon 
till they could obtain further remittances ; and this he 
did with as unconscious an air of sympathy and com- 
miseration as if they had lost their money by some 
accident, instead of his having himself been the agent 
of their loss, by means not merely of his superior 
coolness and skill, but probably, also, by some other 
tricks of his profession. Not the master, who tosses 
a dollar to his slave by way of Christmas present, 
could do it with a greater air of generosity. 

It was curious to remark the crestfallen air of the 
Boston cotton broker and the New York editor, after 
the loss of their money. The day before, they had 


324 


MEMOIRS OF 


held up their heads ; they had had their opinions, 
and pretty positive on^ too ; nor had they been at 
all slow or modest in asserting them. To-day they 
seemed quite sunk into nobodies, the stiffening all 
taken out of them, moody and silent, with nothing to 
say about any thing, eyeing the person to whom their 
money had been transferred, and to whom, the day 
before, they had paid such court as a rich planter, 
with a singular mixture of dislike and terror, much 
like that with which I had often seen an unfortunate 
slave eye a master whom he feared and hated, but 
from whom he felt it impossible to escape. 

Indeed, I could not but think, that strip those two 
northern gentlemen of their fine clothes, and set them 
up in their present crestfallen and disconsolate con- 
dition on the auction block of Messrs Gouge and 
McGrab, or some other slav§ dealers, especially with 
the cool, keen eye of their late depredator upon them, 
and they might very easily have passed muster, as 
two “ white niggers,” born and bred in servitude, and 
stupid fellows at that, eawly to be kept in order, and 
from whom very little mischief or trouble need be 
apprehended. 

Finding these two disconsolate individuals sad, 
solemn, and as dry as a squeezed lemon, and quite in- 
sensible to all his efforts to amuse them, the gambler, 
whose victims they had become, directed his conver- 
sation to me. I cannot say buf that I decidedly en- 
joyed their predicament. “ O, my fine fellows,” said 
I to myself, “you now have a little experience what 
a nice thing it is, this being stripped and plundered ! 
You think it mighty hard to part with a few hundred 
dollars, the earnings, by means I don’t know how 
particularly honest, of perhaps only a few weeks — 
money lost, too, not less by your own consenting 
folly, than by the skill and tricks of a man more 
knowing and adroit than yourselves. Now learn to 
sympathize a little, with multitudes of poor fellows 
in natural gifts and endowments not so very much, 
if at all, your inferiors — some of them, indeed, vastly 


A FUGITIVE. 


325 


your superiors, — regularly stripped and plundered, 
minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week 
by week, month by month, year by year, through a 
whole lifetime; and that, too, by pure fraud and 
force, without any consenting folly on their part ; plun- 
dered, too, hot only of the earnings of their hands, 
but, it may be, of the very wives of their affections, 
and children of their love, sent off to a slave auction, to 
suit the convenience, or to meet the necessities, of the 
men that call themselves their owners ; and with just 
about as much right and title of ownership as this 
gambler has in you — the right of the weak over the 
strong, and of the crafty over the simple ! ’’ 


CHAPTER L. 

As the late clerk, bookkeeper, and partner of 
Gouge and McGrab, now, as it seemed, professional 
blackleg and gambler, might be able, from his former 
connection with that respectable slave trading firm, to 
afford me information essential to the search in which 
I was engaged, I received his advances very gracious- 
ly. In fact the manliness of sentiment which he had 
evinced the day before in the defence of his favorite 
candidate for the vice-presidency had inclined me in 
his favor ; and as to his present pursuits, I was dis- 
posed to think them quite as honest and respectable 
as the slave trading business in which he had former- 
ly been engaged, or as the slave breeding business by 
which so many southern gentlemen of unquestioned 
respectability gained at least a part of their livelihood. 

I found him, indeed, a very agreeable companion, 
free, in a great measure, from those local provin- 
cialisms and narrownesses almost universal among 
even the best educated and most liberal-minded 
Americans — keen in his observations, acute in his 
judgments, (a vein of sly satire running through 


326 


MEMOIRS OF 


his conversation,) but good natured rather than 
bitter. 

Such was the beginning of a companionship 
which gradually ripened into something of a con- 
fidential intimacy. I did not conceal from Mr 
John Colter (for that was the name by which he 
chose to be known to me) my knowledge of his 
rather dubious profession ; at the same time, I was 
willing to accept, at their full value, his graces, tal- 
ents, agreeable parts, and the frequent indications 
which he gave, at least in words, of a naturally gen- 
erous and kindly disposition. Why not make allow- 
ance for his position and circumstances ? Why not 
regard him with as much charity as is asked generally 
for slaveholders ? 

As if to confirm me in this toleration, by which 
he was evidently not a little flattered, and to which 
he did not seem much accustomed, in the course of 
a second night’s stoppage, in a ramble by moonlight, 
Mr Colter having at hand no more pigeons to pluck, 
let me pretty fully into his history. 

It appeared that he was the son of a wealthy 
planter, or of one who had once been wealthy, and 
who, while he lived, had maintained the reputation 
of being so. He had, of course, been brought up in 
habits of great profusion and extravagance. His 
literary instruction had not been neglected^ and he 
had been sent to travel a year or two in Europe, 
where he spent a great deal of money, and fell into 
very dissipated habits, and whence he was recalled 
by the death of his father^ whose estate, when it 
came to be settled, proved insolvent, the plantations 
and slaves being covered by mortgages, and a large 
family of children left wholly unprovided for. 

Thus thrown entirely on his own resources, he 
had great difficulty in finding means to live. The 
general resource of decayed families was to emigrate 
to the new lands of the west ; but this was hardly 
possible, unless one could take a few slaves with 
him, and he had none, nor the means of procuring 


A FUGITIVE. 


327 


any, his character for profusion and extravagance 
being too well established for any of his father’s old 
friends to be willing to trust him. Indeed, since the 
estate had turned out insolvent, it was curious to 
remark, notwithstanding his father’s numerous ac- 
quaintance, and the ostentatious hospitality with 
which for so many years he had .kept open doors, 
how very few friends the family had. 

Being a good scholar, he might have found occu- 
pation as tutor in some family ; but this was looked 
upon as a servile position, incompatible with the 
dignity of a southerner, and only fit to be filled by 
fellows from the north. “ The Romans, you know,” — 
so he remarked to me, — “intrusted the education of 
their children to slave pedagogues ; we generally get 
ours from New England.” As jto going into mercan- 
tile business, that would require capital ; and that 
business, too, was mostly engrossed by adventurers 
from the north, who generally procured their clerks 
and assistants from the same quarter. 

At length, unable to do any better, he had ob- 
tained employment from the rich slave trading firm 
of Gouge and McGrab, rising presently to be their 
first clerk and bookkeeper, and being finally admitted 
as a partner. 

But this kind of business he had found objection- 
able on several accounts. In the first place, it was, 
not considered respectable, though on what grounds 
he was puzzled to tell. He could well understand 
how I, an Englishman, and even how on^ of those 
Yankee fellows, — if it were possible to find one, 
which might be doubted, with courage enough to 
say that his soul was his own, — might find something 
objectionable in this business of trading in human 
muscles and sinews, buying and selling men, women, 
and children, at auction or otherwise. For himself, 
he did not pretend to any great piety or morality ; he 
left that to the other members of the firm. McGrab 
was not actually a Methodist, but his wife and chil- 
dren were devoutly so, and as the old man himself 


328 


MEMOIRS OF 


frequently attended their meetings, the Methodists 
expected to get him, too, at last. Gouge was a very 
devout Baptist, who had been regularly converted 
and dipped, and had built a church at Augusta, 
almost entirely at his own expense ; but with all his 
piety, he had never been able to see any harm in 
the business, buying and selling fellow church mem- 
bers with as little scruple as the mere unconverted 
heathen. Indeed, Gouge thought slavery and slave 
trading a very good thing every way, not only in 
the concrete, but in the abstract also. Didn’t St 
Paul say, “ Slaves, obey your masters ” ? And didn’t 
that settle the question that some were to be slaves, 
and some were to be masters, and that the slaves 
had nothing to do but to obey ? Such was the 
way that Gouge reasoned, putting the matter with 
wonderful force and unction ; so much so, that once, 
when on a visit to New York in search of three or 
four prime house servants, — who had been pur- 
chased in Baltimore, but had broken prison the night 
after, and whom Gouge had traced to that city, — 
falling into an argument on the subject, at the hotel 
where he was stopping, and having a very grave 
address and clerical aspect, he had been mistaken 
by a clergyman, who happened to be present, for 
a D. D., and had been invited to preach on the di- 
vine origin of slavery, in one of the most fashion- 
able churches of that city. 

“ Still,” said Colter, “ in spite of the reasoning and 
the texts of my pious partner, I never have been able 
to approve either slavery or the slave trade in the 
abstract. What, indeed, could be more contemptible, 
than for a parcel of intelligent and able-bodied white 
folks to employ their whole time, pains, and inge- 
nuity, in partly forcing, partly teasing, and partly 
coaxing a set of reluctant, unwilling negroes into 
half doing, in the most slovenly, slouchy, deceptive, 
and unprofitable manner, what those same white 
people might do fifty times better, and with fifty 
times less care and trouble for themselves ? Viewed 


A FUGITIVE. 


329 


thus in the abstract, the whole system, I must 
say, seems to me a very pitiful affair. But in what 
respect the slave traders are less respectable than 
the slave raisers, or the slave buyers, I am unable 
to see; and yet it is a fact that Mr A B, of Vir- 
ginia, who only saves himself from emigration and 
a sheriff’s sale by selling every year a half a dozen 
or so of prime young hands, male and female, for 
the southern market, pretends to look with a cer- 
tain contempt on the trader to whom he sells them, 
while Mr C D, of Georgia, who invests all his 
surplus cash, and all that he can borrow besides, in 
the purchase of fresh slaves, pretends to look with 
a similar contempt on the trader of whom he buys 
them.” For some reason* or other, — so Mr Colter 
humorously remarked, — the old maxim, that the 
receiver is as bad as the thief, did not seem to hold 
good of the slave trading business ; for what reason, 
except that it is so much easier to see the mote in a 
neighbor’s eye, than the beam in one’s own, he was. 
quite unable to tell. 

Then, again, there were things about the trade 
very unpleasant. To be sure, with the worst part of 
it, he had little to do. The buying up the slaves in 
the more northern states was principally managed 
by McGrab. The getting them away from their 
homes, and the separation of families, was often a 
troublesome and disagreeable business ; at least, it 
would have been to him, though McGrab never 
complained of it. The principal management of 
the sMes at Augusta had been in the hands of 
Gouge, who understood, as well as any body, show- 
ing off the stock to the best advantage. Very few 
persons could outdo him in passing off a consump- 
tive or scrofulous hand as every way sound, or a 
woman of forty-five for a woman of thirty. His 
(Colter’s) share of the business had chiefly consisted 
in having charge of the slave pen at Augusta, where 
the stock was kept to be fatted and put in order for 
market. Indulgence and plenty were the order of 
^ 28 * • . 


330 


MEMOIRS OF 


the day at the pen, the object being to keep the peo- 
ple as cheerful, and to put them into as good plight, 
as possible. Yet some scenes would occur there — 
such as the separation of mothers and children hith- 
erto kept together — rather distressing to a man of 
sensibility, like himself; so said Colter, laying his 
hand upon his heart, with a sort of theatrical, mock- 
ing air, which made it difficult to tell whether he was 
in jest or earnest. “ To confess the truth,” he added, 
“ I always had a foolish susceptibility about me to the 
tears of women and children, which a little unsuited 
me for the business. Not being by any means pious, 
— I’ve tried my hand at several things, first and last, 
but have had too much respect for the memory of 
my mother, who instilled into my youthful mind a 
great veneration for religion, to make any pretensions 
to that, — I was not able, like my partner Gouge, to 
shelter myself behind St Paul and the patriarchs ; 
and my natural, carnal, unconverted heart, as Gouge 
said, would sometimes betray me into very bad 
bargains. 

“ In fact, the first serious quarrel that I had with 
my partners — and which led to my going out of 
the concern — grew out of an incident of that sort. 
McGrab had brought in a superior lot of people from 
North Carolina, and among them an uncommonly 
fine young woman, with a nice little boy, just old 
enough to talk — very light mulattoes; in fact, they 
might have passed for white. The deep melancholy 
of her great black eyes, and, in spite of a sadness 
which no smile ever enlivened, the sweet expression 
of her face, made an impression on my susceptible 
heart the very first moment that I saw her. I should 
have desired to retain her as my own, but this I knew 
was a piece of extravagance to which my partners 
would never consent, especially as I was already in- 
debted to the firm for two other girls selected from 
the stock. She had evidently been raised very del- 
icately, the body servant of a lady whose goods had 
been sold on execution ; and McGrab, relaxing into 


A FUGITIVE. 


331 


a grim smile, chuckled over her as about the finest 
piece he had ever purchased — and such a bargain 
too ! He .had bought her and her boy for five hun- 
dred and fifty dollars, while she alone was worth at 
least two thousand, and the boy might sell for a 
hundred more. She understood needle work very 
well, and would fetch a thousand dollars any day as 
seamstress or body servant ; but at least twice as 
much, said McGrab — winking with one .eye at 
Gouge, whose solemn face lighted up into a sort 
of smile at the anticipation — at least twice as much 
in the New Orleans market as a fancy article ! ” 

Struggle as I might, it was impossible for me, at 
these cruel words, to suppress a deep sigh. The keen 
eye and quick observation of Colter had not failed 
to perceive that the mention of the young woman 
and her child from North Carolina had touched me 
in some tender point, and he seemed to have dwelt 
with more detail on the incident, as if with design to 
probe me. 

“ What is the matter ? ” he exclaimed, coming to 
a stop, and looking me full in the face. “ You 
seem to be strangely affected. If you are going to 
sigh and mourn over every handsome young woman 
sold as a fancy article in the New Orleans market, 
you will have a pretty sad time of it.” 

It was only by the greatest effort that I controlled 
rny voice to inquire if he remembered the young 
woman’s name. 

“ O, yes,” he replied; “it was some time ago — 
twenty years, I dare say; but names and faces I 
very seldom forget. The girl, I think, was called 
‘ Cassy.’ ” 

At the sound of that dear name, my heart beat vio- 
lently ; but supporting myself against a tree, under 
which we stood, “ Can you recollect,” I asked, “ the 
name of the child ? ” 

“ Let us see,” said my companion, reflecting for a 
moment. “ O, yes, I have it. I think she called the 
child ‘ Montgomery.’ ” 


332 


MEMOIRS OF 


That was the name we had given to our boy, out 
of compliment to Cassy’s kind mistress ; and I no 
longer doubted that it was of my wife and my child 
that he spoke. 


CHAPTER LI. 

Mastering my emotion as well as I could, I begged 
Colter to go on with his story. But this he was in no 
hurry to do. 

“ You seem,” he said, eyeing me closely, “to have 
some more than ordinary interest in this affair. You 
mentioned, I recollect, this not being your first visit 
to America, but that you had formerly travelled here, 
some twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, you 
must have been a young man, and young men are 
easily captivated; and you young Englishmen, when 
you get among us, notwithstanding all we hear about 
English virtue and decorum, are no more anchorites 
than the rest of us. But even the chaste Joseph, or 
Scipio, or the pope of Rome himself might readily 
be pardoned for melting a little before such attrac- 
tions. There is a soft, winning, captivating way 
about some of those girls that makes them perfectly 
irresistible. I don’t wonder at the envy, rage, and 
jealousy of our white women. They can’t help being 
conscious of their own inferiority in these respects. 
Of course, it makes them cross and fractious — natural 
enough ; but that does not help the matter, nor render 
them any the more agreeable. So they have to be 
content with being mistresses of the house and the 
servants, while some slave girl, black, yellow, or 
white, as the case may be, is mistress of their hus- 
bands’ affections. 

“ There are a good many of 'these girls whom it is 
quite enough to spoil the temper of the best-natured 
woman in the world to have in the house with them. 

“ As to this Cassy, in whom you seem to take such 


A FUGITIVE. 


833 


a particular interest, she would do credit to any body’s 
choice. I say this as both connoisseur and amateur 
in these matters, and indeed professionally, as a 
dealer in the article — in all which respects I reckon 
my opinion to be worth something. The boy was a 
fine boy too. I wonder who his father was ! Fact,” 
said he, looking me full in the face, with a comical 
sort of an air, “ I shouldn’t be surprised if there was 
some resemblance ! ” 

Perceiving, however, that his attempted jocularity 
did not suit the temper of my mind, and his keen 
glance detecting, probably, the tear that stood in my 
eye, he modified his tone a little. 

“ They do, sometimes, get a tight hold of our hearts. 
It is all very well for us to lord it over the men, as if 
they were brutes, monkeys, inferior animals ; but the 
women are very often too much for us. Why, I have 
known, before now, the most fierce, brutal, savage fel- 
low, who feared neither God nor man, made a com- 
plete baby of — as manageable as a tame bear who 
dances to order — by some little black or yellow girl 
of fifteen or twenty, who has thus contrived to play 
the Queen Esther on the plantation, and to stand 
often between the fury of her lord and master and 
the backs of her dingy kindred. This is one of its 
alleviations not much dwelt upon by those who un- 
dertake to apologize for slavery ; but which, perhaps, 
does more than every thing else put together to in- 
fuse a certain modicum of kindly feeling into the re- 
lation of master and slave. That is the way that 
nature takes to bring both master and slave to their 
natural equality. Cupid, with his bow and arrows, 
is the sworn enemy of all castes and patrician dis- 
tinctions. 

“ Pray, sir, did you ever read Edwards’s History of 
the West Indies ? ” 

“ Yes, I have.” 

Then, perhaps, you recollect an ode inserted in it, 
addressed to the Sable Venus. Edwards, you know, 
was a Jamaica planter, a grave historian, an advocate 


334 


MEMOIRS OF 


of the slave trade, perfectly orthodox on that whole 
subject, but a man of sense and observation, experi- 
ence and sensibility, who had both seen and felt too 
much to undertake to found an argument for slavery, 
such as we hear nowadays on the pretended antip- 
athy between the races; and who, in wishing to give 
a correct view of the state of things in the West In- 
dies, thought it best to assume the disguise of verse 
and allegory. Happening to meet with the book, 
lately, at Charleston, the ode quite struck my fancy, 
and, by way of joke, I wrote off several copies, and 
sent them to a number of our leading southern states- 
men at Washington. I dare say I can repeat it, pre- 
serving the ideas at least, if not always the words, 
and changing, as I did in my copies, the scene from 
Jamaica, where Edwards lays it, to this meridian, 
which it suits just about as well.” 

So saying, he repeated, with a sort of mock ear- 
nestness suited to their tone, the following stanzas, 
of which he afterwards gave me a copy: — 


THE SABLE VENUS. 

AN ODE. 

Come to my bosom, genial fire, 

Soft sounds and lively thoughts inspire ; 

Unusual is my theme ; 

Not such dissolving Ovid sung. 

Nor melting Sappho’s glowing tongue — 
More dainty mine I deem. 

Sweet is the beam of morning bright, 
Yet sweet the sober shade of night, 
From rich Angola’s shores ; 

While beauty, clad in sable dye, 
Enchanting fires the wondering e^e. 
Farewell, ye Paphian bowers ! 

0, sable queen ! thy wild domain 
I seek, and court thy gentle reign, 


A FUGITIVE. 


335 


8o sootliing, soft, and sweet ; 

Where melting love, sincere delight, 

Fond pleasure ready joys invite, 

And unpriced raptures meet! 

The prating French, the Spaniard proud, 
The double Scot, Hibernian loud, 

And sullen English own 
The pleasing softness of thy sway. 

And here transferred allegiance pay. 

For gracious is thy throne. 

From east to west, o’er either Ind, 

Thy sceptre sways : thy power, we find. 
Beyond the tropic ’s felt ; 

The blazing sun, that gilds the zone. 

Waits but the triumphs of thy throne, 
Quite round the burning belt. 

When thou, America to view. 

That vast domain, thy conquest new. 

First left thy native shore. 

Bright was the morn, and soft the breeze ; 
With wanton joy the curling seas 
The beauteous burden bore. 

Thy skin excelled the raven’s plume. 

Thy breath the fragrant orange bloom. 
Thy eye the tropic’s beam ; 

Soft was thy lip as silken down. 

And mild thy look as evening sun. 

That gilds the mountain stream. 

The loveliest limbs thy form compose. 
Such as thy sister- Venus chose 
In Florence, where she’s seen : 

Both just alike, except the white — 

No difference at all at night 
The beauteous dames between. 

O, when thy ship had touched the strand, 
VHiat raptures seized the ravished land I 


336 


MEMOIRS OF 


From every side they came ; 

Each mountain, valley, plain, and grove, 

Haste eagerly to show their love ; 

Right welcome was the dame. 

Virginia’s shouts were heard aloud, 

Gay Carolina sent a crowd, 

Grave Georgia not a few ; 

No rabble rout. I heard it said 
Some great ones joined the cavalcade ; 

The muse will not say who. 

Gay goddess of the sable band. 

Propitious still this grateful land 
With thy sweet presence bless ; 

Here fix secure thy constant throne ; 

We all adore, and thee alone. 

The queen of love confess. 

For me, if I no longer pay 
Allegiance to thy sister’s sway, 

I act no fickle part : 

It were ingratitude to slight 
Superior kindness. I delight 
To feel a grateful heart. 

Then, playful goddess, cease to change, 

Nor in new beauties vainly range ; 

For whatsoe’er thy hue. 

Try every form thou canst put on. 

I’ll follow thee through every one ; 

So stanch I am, so true. 

Do thou in gentle Phibia smile. 

In artful -Beneba beguile. 

In wanton Mimba pout. 

In sprightly Cuba’s eyes look gay. 

Or grave in sober Quashaba, 

I still should find thee out. 

“ There,” said he, repeating the last stanza, and 
giving to it all the benefit of a very graceful elo- 


A FUGITIVE. 


337 


cution, “ that’s a chorus, equal to any thing in Tom 
Moore, in which three quarters of our young men, 
and a good many of the old ones, too, for that mat- 
ter, might join ; and yet half of them, perhaps just 
fresh from love-making to some sable inamorata, will 
talk to you about the antipathy of the races, and just 
as likely as not wind up with a discourse on the 
horrors of amalgamation! What a world of cant, 
humbug, and hypocrisy we do live in ! ” 

As I remained silent, he still went on — “ Suppos- 
ing, though, this Gassy to have been a sweetheart of 
yours, — and I can’t conceive why else you show so 
much interest in her, — still I can hardly set you down 
as a votary of the sable Venus. She rather belonged 
to the white race ; but you know, here at the south, 
we reckon all slaves as ‘ niggers,’ whatever their 
color. Just catch a stray Irish or German girl, and 
sell her, — a thing sometimes done, — and she turns 
a nigger at once, and makes just as good a slave as 
if there were African blood in her veins.” 

“ If,” I said, commanding myself as well as I could, 
“you really suppose I have any such interest as you 
speak of in the girl and her child, you might as well 
leave off this fooling, and tell me what became of 
them. We will, if you please, discuss these matters 
of antipathies, and amalgamation, and the sable Ve- 
nus, which you seem so fond of, at some other more 
convenient opportunity.” 

“ Well,” said he, “ so far as I personally am con- 
cerned, I stand quite clear. If I had actually fore- 
seen that, twenty years after, I was to be hauled over 
the coals by yourself in person, — and, having been 
watching your eye for the last half hour, I judge you 
to be one I should not care about quarrelling with, — 
I could not, on the whole, have done better by the 
girl than I did. 

“ Should I say that I made no amorous advances 
to her, you would scarcely believe me. I did; but 
she replied with such a mere agony of tears and en- 
treaty, as quite extinguished all my passion, and con- 
verted it into pity. 

29 


338 


MEMOIRS OF 


“ I soon found that her most immediate and press- 
ing source of suffering was the apprehension lest she 
might be separated from her boy ; and indeed there 
was some occasion for it. A New Orleans trader, 
with whom we often dealt, had evinced a great dis- 
position to buy her. After a careful examination of 
her person, taking more liberties than I shall care to 
mention to you, he pronounced her a prime wench, 
a first-rate article. A, number one, extremely well 
adapted to the New Orleans market ; and he offered 
to pay two thousand dollars for her, cash, which 
Gouge agreed to take, provided he would give an ad- 
ditional hundred dollars for the boy. But the trader 
did not want the boy, who would only be a drawback 
upon the value of the woman when he came to sell 
her ; at least so he pretended, and he insisted that 
the boy ought to be thrown into the bargain. A lady 
of Augusta, in search of a small boy to bring up as 
body servant to her infant son, offered to give seventy- 
five dollars for him. The chance seemed to be that 
the boy would be sold to the Augusta woman, and 
the mother to the New Orleans trader. Aware of 
this, in the greatest distress she appealed to me to 
save her from this separation. It so happened that 
during Gouge’s absence at a sheriff’s sale some ten 
miles in the country, where he thought some bargains 
might be picked up, a lady and gentleman called at 
the pen in search of a female attendant for the lady. 
The gentleman was a Mississippi planter, resident 
somewhere in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, return- 
ing home with his new wife, whom he had lately mar- 
ried at the north. I pointed out this Gassy to their 
notice, and she besieged them with pressing entrea- 
ties, making the little boy kneel, and put his tiny 
hands together, and pray first the lady and then the 
gentleman to buy him and his mother, and not to 
let the New Orleans trader take his mother away 
from him. 

“ The lady, after due inquiries of Gassy as to her 
accomplishments and capabilities, declared her to be 


A FUGITIVE. 


339 


just the person she wanted. She had been bred 
up at the north, did not like niggers, and could 
not bear to have a black wench about her ; whereas 
this one, she said, was as nice and as white, almost, 
as a New England girl, and the boy might soon be 
taught to clean the knives, wait at table, and make 
himself otherwise useful. 

“ I offered to take, for the two, two thousand and 
fifty dollars — a price which the husband thought 
enormous. He could buy three first-rate field hands 
for that. Somebody that was not quite so young and 
good looking would answer his wife’s purpose just 
as well, and might, perhaps, too, be a safer bargain 
all round — an intimation clear enough to me, but 
which the wife did not seem to understand. She 
still insisted upon buying Gassy ; and being yet in 
the honeymoon, she carried the day ; and the bill of 
sale was signed, the money paid, and the mother and 
child ■ delivered to their new owners just as Gouge 
rode up to the pen. 

“ When the hard-hearted old rascal found out that 
I had sold the mother and child together for twenty- 
five dollars less than he could have got by selling them 
separately, you can’t imagine what a fuss he made. 
This pious Baptist church member, who had been 
mistaken in New York, as I have told you, for a Doc- 
tor of Divinity, thrown quite off’ his balance, cursed 
and swore like a pirate. If I had fairly given them 
away he would not have been more abusive. I 
should have thought that for the moment at least he 
had fallen from grace, only that was no part of his 
creed. He was no Methodist ; he and McGrab used 
to have warm disputes sometimes on that head. 
McGrab thought that even the best man might some- 
times fall away ; but Gouge insisted very positively 
upon the perseverance of the saints, of whom he did 
not doubt himself to be one. 

“ I dwelt upon the hardship of separating the 
mother and her child, and told Gouge he ought to be 
satisfied, as we made a handsome profit on the trans- 


340 


MEMOIRS OF 


action as it was. I had ascertained — so I told him — 
that the woman was pious, and that, apart from her 
dread of being separated from her child, she had a 
great horror of being sold for the New Orleans 
market, and I insisted that as a matter of religion 
and conscience, it was better to dispose of her, as I 
had done, to a private family, and most probably 
a kind mistress, than to sell her to the New Or- 
leans slave trader. Here I thought I had my pious 
partner at advantage, and I followed it up by 
quoting the text, ‘ Thou shalt not oppress the widow 
and the Mherless.’ Though I was not so well read 
in the Scriptures as Gouge, it came into my mind 
as quite to the purpose. But highly indignant that 
such a graceless fellow as I, who belonged to no 
church, and made no pretensions to have any reli- 
gion, should presume to dictate him on that subject. 
Gouge turned upon me with a perfect fury. The 
text, he said, did not apply. He had once had a long 
talk on that very subject with Parson Softwords. As 
slaves could not be married, there could be — so the 
parson thought — no widows among them ; and as to 
the children, not being born in lawful wedlock, they 
could not become fatherless, — for they had no fathers, 
— being in the eye of the law, as he had heard the 
learned Judge Hallett observe from the bench, the 
children of nobody. As to pious niggers, that was 
all moonshine ; he did not believe in any such thing. 
He belonged, in fact, to a pretty numerous sect in 
these parts, called Anti-mission Baptists, or Hard 
Shells, who don’t think the Lord ever intended the 
heathen to be converted, or negroes to be any thing 
but slaves, or any body to be saved except their 
own precious selves, and that entirely by faith and 
grace, wholly independent of works. As to the girl’s 
making such a fuss about parting from her child, that. 
Gouge said, was a piece of great nonsense. Wasn’t 
she young enough to have a dozen more ? 

“ The upshot of the matter was, what with Gouge’s 
brutality and purse-proud insolence, and my hot 


A FUGITIVE. 


341 


temper, which I had not then learned so well how to 
command, that we soon got into a violent quarrel, 
which ended in my giving him a caning on the spot, 
and of course in the breaking up of the partnership. 

“ I was, indeed, quite too soft for that business. As 
to the men, I should have done well enough with 
them ; but the women, old and young, were always 
getting up such scenes, and were always so full of 
complaints about being separated from their daugh- 
ters, and their mothers, and their babies, and their 
husbands, that to a man who had the least of a ten- 
der spot in his heart, it was perfectly intolerable. 

‘‘ Thus ousted from the slave trading business, it be- 
came necessary for me to find some other occupation ; 
but that was not so easy. The occupations that a 
southern gentleman can adopt without degradation, 
are very few indeed. My manners, address, the good 
songs I could sing, and good stories I could tell, had 
made me rather a favorite in society ; and as I never 
drank, and understood a thing or two about cards 
and dice, billiards and faro tables, I was able to 
replenish my pockets in that way ; and finally, for 
want of a better, that became my regular profession.’’ 

- “ And,” said I, wishing to pay him off a little for 
his late tantalizings, “ is this one of those few occupa- 
tions which a southern gentleman can adopt without 
degradation ? ” 

“ The gentility of gambling can’t be denied,” he 
said, ‘‘ since it is very freely practised by the larger 
part of southern gentlemen. Once in a while the 
legislatures are seized with a fit of penitence or virtue, 
and pass laws to break it up ; but nobody ever thinks 
of paying any attention to those laws, or attempting 
to enforce them, except, now and then, some poor 
plucked pigeon, who undertakes to revenge himself 
in that way. But though gambling is just as gen- 
teel as slaveholding, some how or other, by an incon- 
sistency like that in the case of the slave traders, we 
who make a profession of it, though we associate 
constantly with gentlemen, are not, I must confess, 


342 


MEMOIRS OF 


reckoned to belong precisely to that class, except, in- 
deed, we get money enough to buy a plantation and 
retire.” 

“ It is charged,” said I, “ upon those of your pro- 
fession, that, not content with the fair chances of the 
game, you contrive to take undue advantages.” 

“ Yes ; and so do half of the gentlemen players, 
as far as they know how, and have the opportunity. 
There is always a tendency, in games of chance, to 
run a little into games of skill. Suppose we do plun- 
der the planters — don’t they live by plundering the 
negroes ? What right have they to complain ? Isn’t 
sauce for the goose sauce for the gander ? I tell you 
our whole system here is a system of plunder from 
beginning to end. ’Tis only the slaves, and some of 
the poor whites who own no slaves, who can be said 
to earn an honest living. The planters live on the 
plunder of the slaves, whom they force to labor for 
them. The slaves steal all they can from the plant- 
- ers, and a good many of the poor whites connive at 
and help them in it. A parcel of bloodsucking 
Yankee pedlers and New York agents overrun our 
country, and carry off their share of' the spoils ; and 
we who have cool heads and dexterous hands enough 
to overreach the whole set, planters, Yankees, and 
New Yorkers — we stand, for aught I see, upon just 
as sound a moral basis as the rest of them. Every 
thing belongs to the strong, the wise, and the cun- 
ning ; that is the foundation stone of our southern 
system of society. The living upon the plunder of 
others is one of the organic sins of this community ; 
and the doctrine, I believe, has been advanced by a 
celebrated northern divine, that for the organic sins 
of a community, nobody is individually responsible. 
Now, if this good-natured sort of doctrine, which, for 
my part, I don’t find any fault with, is going to save 
the souls and the characters of Gouge and Me Grab, 
or of the planters who patronize and support them, 
shan’t we professional gentlemen also have the benefit 
of it?” 


A FUGITIVE. 


343 


CHAPTER LIL 

It was not very difficult to discover under the volu- 
bility and vivacity, a little forced, of this philosophical 
blacldeg, into whose intimacy I had been so sudden- 
ly introduced, a deep-seated and bitter chagrin, and 
even shame, at living as he did ; however he might 
urge, by way of apology, that it was only one of the 
applicatigns of the fundamental principle of every 
slaveholding community. This, indeed, was an idea 
upon which he seemed to pride himself, and upon 
which he dwelt with a good deal of pertinacious 
ingenuity. To gain a living by the plunder of the 
weak and simple, was, he admitted, in the abstract, 
not to be defended. Yet, if he did not do it, some- 
body else would. His abstinence would not save 
them. The weak and simple were destined to be 
plundered; and plundered they would be by some- 
body. Bred up as he had been to extravagant habits, 
could he be expected to renounce an employment — 
liable indeed to some fluctuations and uncertainties, 
as well as to some moral objections, but, on the 
whole, one that paid — and to run the risk of starv- 
ing, just to gratify his conscientious scruples? He 
trusted, he said, that, though a professional gambler, 
he had a conscience. His quarrel with Gouge and 
Me Grab, and his abandonment of the slave trading 
business, at which he might have made a fortune, 
was, he thought, evidence enough of that. But there 
was a limit to all things. A man must live, and live 
by such means, too, as his position and gifts allow him 
to adopt; and, all things considered, he did not see 
that he could be expected to give up his profession 
any more than the slaveholders their slaves. Nor 
can I say that I did, either. 

On the whole, besides the necessity I was under of 
using him, and the additional information he might 
give me, in the search in which I was engaged, there 


344 


♦ MEMOIRS OF 


was something in his straightforward, downright 
way of looking at things, as well as in his lively 
conversation and agreeable manners, which, rather 
pleased me. 

I therefore proceeded to make a return of his con- 
fidence, at which he seemed to be a good deal flat- 
tered. Complimenting his sagacity, I admitted my 
intimacy with a female slave, many years ago, whom, 
from his description of her, and the circumstances he 
had mentioned, I believed to be the very one whom 
McGrab had purchased in North Carolina, and whom 
he had sold to the Mississippi planter ; and I added, 
that I believed her boy to be my child. What was 
the name of the planter, and could he aid me any 
further in finding them out? 

“ And suppose you find them,” he asked, “ what 
do you intend to do ? ” 

“ Buy them,” I answered, “ if I can, and set them 
free.” 

“ Better think twice,” he replied, “ before you set 
out on any such adventure. Time, you know, makes 
changes. You can’t expect to get back the young 
girl you left in North Carolina. O, the deceitful 
baggage ! Didn’t she tell me, with tears streaming 
down those great black eyes of hers, and such an air 
of truth that I couldn’t help believing her, that she 
had a husband, the only man she had ever known 
any thing about, who was the father of her child, 
and who had been carried off by the slave traders a 
year or two before, and whom she expected yet to 
meet, by some good providence, some where in the 
south ! Don’t flatter yourself with the idea of any 
constancy to you. Even had she wished it, it could 
hardly have been in her power. Like as not you will' 
find her, if at all, grown as plump as a beer barrel, 
housekeeper, and something else besides, to her mas- 
ter ; or may be, by this time, cook or washerwoman, 
and the mother, as Gouge said she might be, of a 
dozen additional children, and perhaps with an agree- 
able variety of complexions; though, for that matter. 


A FUGITIVE. 


345 


slave women of her color are in general mighty 
squeamish and particular — quite as much so as the 
white women — as to any connection with men of a 
darker hue than themselves.” 

Painful to me as these suggestions were, I could 
not but admit their high degree of probability. To 
what might not twenty years of servitude have re- 
duced the wife of my heart ! To what humiliations, 
dishonors, miserable degradations, corrupting connec- 
tions might she not have been subjected, tempting 
as she was by her innocence, beauty, and gentleness, 
and exposed — without the least shield of law, reli- 
gion, or public opinion — to the unbridled appetite, I 
do not say of any lecherous debauchee, but of any 
polygamous patriarch, amorous youth, or luxurious 
respectability who might have the fancy or the means 
to purchase her! 

It made my heart grow sick and my brain spin to 
think of it. 

“ And then the boy,” continued my tormenter. 
“ If you had him as I saw him, — a bright little fellow, 
just able to speak, full of life and joy, and unable to 
understand what made his mother cry so, — you might 
hope to make something of him. He was a child 
such as nobody need be ashamed of. But what do 
you suppose he is by this time, with the benefit of a 
slave education ? If, my dear sir, you intended to 
act the father by him, or the friend by her, you should 
not have left them all this time in slavery.” 

I hastened to explain, in general terms, that my 
leaving them as they were was, at the time of my sep- 
aration from th®m, a thing entirely beyond my con- 
trol — it was not in my power to do otherwise ; but 
that, so soon as I became possessed of the means, I 
had made every effort to discover and to purchase them; 
that I had traced them to Augusta, where all clew to 
them had been lost ; but that the clew which he had 
so unexpectedly and accidentally put into my hands 
had recalled all the past, and, as I was unmarried, 
childless, and with nothing else in particular to oc- 


346 


MEMOIRS OF 


cupy my thoughts, had inspired me with fresh desire 
to find them out, and, if possible, to make them free. 

“ Quite a romantic fellow, I see,” rejoined my 
companion ; “ quite another Dick Johnson. True 
enough, the idea is not very agreeable of having one’s 
children kicked, cuffed, and lashed through the world 
at the discretion of brutal overseers, peevish mis- 
tresses, or drunken, cross-grained masters, with no 
possible opening to rise if they would, and with no 
chance before them but to propagate a race of slaves. 
I dare say it seems so to you, with your English edu- 
cation, and especially as you have not any lawful 
children for your affections to fix upon. But here we 
don’t mind it. A man is expected to sacrifice his 
own private paternal feelings, if he has any, for the 
good of the class to which he belongs. I dare say, 
in the course of time, the only representatives of 
many of our m«st distinguished southern statesmen 
and wealthiest families will be found among their 
slave descendants. 

“ Take my advice, and give over a ridiculous. Quix- 
otic expedition. However, if you will persist in it, I 
will help you what little I can. The Mississippi 
planter, to whom the girl and her child were sold, 
was named Thomas. I have seen him several times 
since in my travels. Indeed, some handsome sums of 
money have before now passed from his pocket to 
mine. He still lives, or did lately, at no great dis- 
tance from Vicksburg. I have friends in that town 
to whom I will give you letters, and by whose assist- 
ance you can find him out. Perhaps your girl and 
her boy are still living in his family. But have a 
care that you don’t catch a Tartar.” 


A FUGITIVE. 


347 


CHAPTER LIIL 

Leaving my new acquaintance behind, at Augusta, 
where, as he said, he had business to attend to, and 
provided with the letters which he had promised me, 
I set out for Vicksburg. 

Great was my joy at once more getting on the track 
of the lost ones ; yet I could not but be harassed with 
many distressing doubts and uncertainties as to what, 
even if I found them, might be the results of my search. 

The first part of my journey from Augusta led me 
through a district worn out and partially abandoned ; 
a fac simile — and from the same causes — of what I 
had seen so much of in Virginia and the Carolinas. 
Crossing the Oconee, and presently the Oakmulgee, I 
reached a new country, of which the earliest settle- 
ments did not date back more than twenty years ; 
but which already presented, here and there, speci- 
mens of the destructive agricultural system of the 
south, in gullied fields, especially on the hill sides from 
which the goil had been completely washed away; 
over which still stood erect the blackened trunks of the 
tenants of the original forest, killed by the process of 
girdling, but which, though dead and blasted, re- 
mained yet firmly rooted in the soil, sternly smiling, 
as it were, over the scene of destruction ; the virgin 
soil, at first so fertile, having been washed into the 
neighboring hollows, and leaving exposed nothing 
but a barren surface of red and arid clay. Can there 
be a more striking symbol than one of these aban- 
doned fields — the dead, giant trunks still towering 
over it, as if by way of memento of what it once 
was — of the natural effects of the plundering sys- 
tem upon which the whole organization of the slave- 
holding states is based ; and which extends even to 
the land itself, rifled of its virgin strength by a shift- 
less system of ignorant haste to be rich, — and then 
abandoned to hopeless sterility ? 


348 


MEMOIRS OF 


Having crossed the Flint, I entered then upon the 
primitive forests, the hunting grounds of the Creeks, 
but from which the insatiable cupidity of the greedy 
Georgians, backed by the power of the federal gov- 
ernment, was already preparing forcibly to expel them 
- — a thing soon after effected — in order to replace the 
wild, free tenants of the forest by gangs of miserable 
slaves purchased up and transferred from the worn- 
out fields of Virginia and the Carolinas. 

Upon presently reaching the banks of the Ala- 
bama, I emerged from these soon-to-be-violated sol- 
itudes, and thence to the banks of the Mississippi, 
traversed a country which the Indians had been al- 
ready compelled to resign, and which was rapidly 
filling up with a most miscellaneous population from 
the more northern slave states ; scions of the “ first 
families ” of Virginia, with such numbers of slaves 
as by some hocus pocus they could save from the 
grasp of their creditors, coming to refound their for- 
tunes in this new country; gangs of slaves sent out 
under overseers by the wealthier slaveholders of the 
old states to open new plantations, where their labor 
might be more productive ; Georgia “ Crackers,” with 
their pale, tallow-colored visages ; with other wretch- 
ed specimens of white poverty, ignorance, and deg- 
radation coming from North Carolina, squatters on 
these new lands ; Yankee traders, and doctors, and law- 
yers, quacks and pettifoggers, with land speculators, 
slave traders, gamblers, horse thieves, and all kinds of 
adventurers, including a reasonable mixture of Bap- 
tist and Methodist preachers, — all, except the preach- 
ers, and not all of them, with but one idea in their 
heads, the growing rich suddenly ; and with but two 
words in their mouths, namely, “ niggers ” and cotton. 

It was, indeed, in these new settlements, had one 
leisure and curiosity for the purpose, that the slave- 
holding system of the United States might be seen 
operating unrestrained, and exhibiting its true charac- 
ter and richest development. All the old slave states 
had been originally planted as free communities on 


A FUGITIVE. 


349 


the British model, slavery having been superinduced 
thereupon as an excrescence or accessory ; and, by 
tradition and habit, there still remain in those states 
— though fast dying out, under the influence of the 
slave breeding business — some good old wholesome 
English ideas. But the states of Alabama and Mis- 
sissippi have been thoroughly slave states from the 
beginning, filled up by a colluvium of immigrants 
from the older slave states, mostly young men, who, 
in leaving their homes, would seem to have left 
behind them, as mere prejudices, every principle 
of humanity, justice, or moderation, ready, like so 
many ferocious sharks, to devour every thing and 
every body, and even each other. Nowhere in any 
part of the globe calling itself civilized, I doubt very 
much if any where, at any time, have ferocious enor- 
mities, and cold blooded murders, with pistols, rifles, 
and bowie knaves, been so much a matter of every- 
day occurrence. Nowhere, between Lynch law com- 
mittees on the one hand, and private murderers on 
the other, has life been so utterly insecure. As to 
the security of property, let the, New York merchants 
who have traded to those states, let the English 
holders of Mississippi bonds, answer. Not that the 
holders of those bonds deserve any commiseration. 
Those securities were created — and the purchasers of 
them knew it, or ought to have known it — to raise 
funds with which to enable the Mississippi planters 
to increase their stock of slaves ; and it is but a right- 
eous retribution, that Englishmen who lent their 
money for so nefarious a purpose should be cheated 
out of every penny of it. 

In the older slave states, the slaves living often on 
plantations on which they were born, and the connec- 
tion between them and their owners being frequently 
hereditary, they cannot but establish certain ties of 
sympathy with those owners more or less strong, 
and customs of indulgence, and especially family 
relations among themselves, which have a partial 
operation to alleviate their condition. But in the 
30 


350 


MEMOIRS OF 


migration southward, accomplished to a great extent 
through the agency of slave traders, all these ties and 
connections are broken up ; all the horrors of the 
African slave trade are renewed; all the rudiments 
of ideas previously existing in Maryland and Virginia, 
and North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, that 
the negroes, after all, though they be slaves, are still 
men, and as such entitled to a certain degree of 
human sympathy and regard, and even to be looked 
upon as capable of improvement, of religious instruc- 
tion, and perhaps, sometime or other, of liberty ; these 
shoots of the sentiment of humanity, which, though 
tender, and as it were scarcely daring to show them- 
selves, and nipped, of late, by disastrous frosts, yet 
give promise and hope of a rich future harvest, — 
all these germs of consolation, in the transfer of the 
wretched slaves to the states of which I now speak, 
are assiduously plucked up as pernicious weeds in 
the nettle bed of slavery. Every belter sentiment, 
every voice of sympathy, is carefully extinguished, 
the idea being sedulously inculcated by courts, and 
legislatures, and politicians, and newspapers, and by 
at least half or more of those who call themselves 
ministers of the gospel, that the negroes are in na- 
ture, what they are treated as being, mere merchan- 
dise, mere property, mere animals, intended to be 
used like horses and oxen in making cotton, and, like 
horses and oxen, to be kept forever under the yoke, 
the bridle, the goad, and the whip, never fit for or ca- 
pable of being any thing but slaves. 

The old English idea that liberty is to be favored 

— that idea which abolished slavery in Europe, and 
which oncejiad considerable influence on the courts 
and legislatures of the more northern slave states — 
has, in these new hotbeds of cotton and despotism, been 
totally extinguished. Once a slaye a slave forever, 

— black father or white father, whatever the complex- 
ion, — beyond the possibility even that the slave 
owning parent shall be able to emancipate his own 
children. Such is the diabolical doctrine of despot- 


A FUGITIVE. 


351 


ism, announced by Chief Justice Sharkey, — and 
never was judge more significantly named, — from 
the bench of the Supreme Court of Mississippi. 
And already this doctrine begins to find many advo- 
cates among the inhabitants of the new slave breed- 
ing Guinea, into which Virginia and Maryland have 
degenerated; nor, when the pinch comes, will there be 
wanting northern merchants, eager to please their 
southern customers ; northern politicians, for the 
prospect of office, ready to worship Satan himself ; 
northern editors, who publish papers for circulation 
at the south ; northern doctors of divinity, ready 
to yield up, if not their own mothers, — for though he 
might say it in the heat of the moment, not even the 
famous Dr. Dewey is quite brave enough to stick to 
that, — yet, at all events, ready to surrender their 
own brothers into servitude, to keep the slavehold- 
ers quiet and good natured : plenty of such supple 
tools will not be wanting to preach, throughout the 
pretended free states, subscription to the perpetuity of 
servitude as the corner stone of the American Union ! 

Let those who would trace the onward march of 
American slavery, since the time of Washington and 
Jefferson, call to mind the difference between the prin- 
ciples avowed by them and those set up at the pres- 
ent day by the Mississippi Sharkeys and Virginia 
slave breeders for the market, who nominate the pres- 
idents, dictate the legislating, make tools of the 
politicians, and aspire, not unsuccessfully, to control 
the moral and religious sentiment of America ! 


CHAPTER LIV. 

As I entered the town of Vicksburg, an appalling 
prospect met my eyes : five men hanging by the neck, 
just swung off; as it would seem, from an extempore 
gallows, and struggling in the agonies of death; a 


352 


MEMOIRS OF 


military company drawn up in arms ; a band of black 
musicians playing Yankee Doodle ; a crowd of by- 
standers, of all ages and colors, apparently in the 
greatest state of excitement ; and a frantic woman, 
with a young child in either hand, addressing herself, 
with veherhent gesticulations, to a man who seemed 
to have the direction of the proceedings, and whom 
I took — though I did not perceive that he wore any 
official dress or badge — to be the high sheriff of the 
county. 

On reaching the hotel, I learnt, however, to my 
great astonishment, that this was no regular execu- 
tion by process of law, but entirely an amateur per- 
formance, got up by a committee of citizens, headed 
by the cashier of the Planters’ Bank, : — one of those 
institutions whose bonds are not unknown in England, 
though I believe they bear no particular price at the 
present moment, — the very person, in fact, whom, 
from the office he had assumed, I had supposed to 
be the high sheriff. I learnt all this with astonish- 
ment, because the victims had appeared to be white 
men. Had they been black or colored, their being 
hung in some paroxysm of popular passion or fear 
would not in the least have surprised me. 

Inquiring a little further into the history of this 
singular proceeding, I was told that the men who 
had been hung were gamblers, part of a gang of 
cheats and desperado^ by whom that town had long 
been infested ; that the citizens, determined to toler- 
ate such a nuisance no longer, had ordered them to 
depart, ahd, when they refused to do so, had pro- 
ceeded to force their houses and destroy their gam- 
bling tools — an operation which the gamblers resisted 
by force, firing upon their assailants, and having ac- 
tually shot dead a leading and very estimable citizen, 
in the act of forcing his way into one of the houses. 

The gamblers, however, had all been taken, except 
tw’-o or three, who had managed to escape. The blood 
of the company was up. The sight of their slaugh- 
tered leader, copious draughts of brandy, the recollec- 


A FUGITIVE. 


353 


tion of their own losses at the gaming table, and the 
dread of being challenged and shot, or shot without 
being challenged by the gamblers, two or three of 
whom were known as very desperate fellows, — all 
these motives cooperating, and it being very doubtful 
whether, if the matter was referred to the legal 
tribunals, those who had riotously broken into the 
houses of other people, even with the professed object 
of destroying roulette tables, might not run quite as 
much risk of condemnation as those who had fired, 
even with fatal effect, upon their burglarious assail- 
ants, — all these things considered, it had finally 
been determined, as the shortest and most expedient 
method of settling the business, to take the gamblers 
to the skirts of the town, and to hang them there on 
the instant. 

To those, indeed, accustomed to the curt pro- 
ceedings of the slave code, under which suspicion 
serves for evidence, and power usurps the place of 
judicial discrimination, all the delays and formalities 
of the ordinary administration of penal jurisprudence 
must seem tedious and absurd ; and hence the con- 
stantly increasing tendency in the south to substitute, 
in the place of that administration, in the case of 
white men as well as of slaves, the summary process 
of Lynch law. It is vain, indeed, to expect that men 
constantly hardened and brutalized in the struggle to 
extort from their slaves the utmost driblet of un- 
willing labor, and accustomed freely to indulge, as 
against these unresisting victims, every caprice of 
brutal fury, should retain any very delicate sense of 
the proprieties of justice as among themselves. 

Before I had yet learnt more than a general out- 
line of the story, the principal actors in this affair, 
finding it necessary to sustain their dignity and to 
recruit their self-reliance by fresh draughts of brandy, 
reached the hotel at which I wa;s stopping. They 
were followed by the woman, with the two little 
children, whom I had noticed as I passed the place 
of execution, and whom I now found to be the wife 
30 * 


354 


MEMOIRS OF 


of one of the victims. It was in vain that she be- 
sought permission to take down and to bury the body 
of her husband. This was denied, with brutal threats 
that any person who dared to cut them down till they 
had hung there twenty-four hours, by way of exam- 
ple, should be made to share their fate. Such, indeed, 
was the passionate fury of the multitude, that the 
poor woman, in alarm for her own life, fled to the 
river bank, and, placing her two children in a skiff, 
entered herself, and pushed off, thinking this a safer 
course than to remain longer at Vicksburg. 

After the tumult had subsided a little, I showed 
the bar-keeper the direction of the letter of introduc- 
tion I had brought, and inquired if he knew such a 
person. 

No sooner had he read the name than his face as- 
sumed an expression of horror and alarm. “ Do you 
know that person ? ” he eagerly inquired. 

I told him I did not. This was my first visit to 
this part of the country. The letter had been given 
me by a gentleman whom I had met at Augusta. 

“ Pray don’t mention the name,” he replied ; “ say 
nothing of it to any body. This letter is addressed to 
one of the persons whom you saw hung as you came 
into the town. He kept a roulette table, no doubt, 
and understood a thing or two ; but was a generous- 
hearted soul for all that ; and every way quite as much 
a gentleman as half those concerned in hanging 
him. Should you mention his name, you might 
yourself be seized as one of the gang, and hung with 
the rest.” 

Congratulating myself on this lucky escape, I then 
ventured to inquire of the bar-keeper if he knew a 
planter in that vicinity of the name of Thomas. 

There had been, he told me, a planter of that 
name, — and from the account he gave of him, I was 
satisfied it was the one of whom I was in search, — 
who lived formerly a few miles off ; but within two 
or three years past he had moved to a distance of 
some fifty miles, in Madison county, up the Big 
Black. 


A FUGITIVE. 


355 


The friendly bar-keeper aided me the next day in 
procuring a horse, and I set out for Madison county, 
again passing, as I left the town, the five murdered 
gamblers still swinging from the gallows. 

Proceeding up the Big Black, I presently found 
that the spirit of extempore hanging was by no means 
confined to Vicksburg, but raged as a sort of epidemic 
in all that part of the state of Mississippi. 

The counties of Hinds and Madison were excited 
to a pitch of terror bordering on madness, by the 
rumor of a slave insurrection. Some overseers, lurk- 
ing among the negro cabins, had obtained some hint 
of a conspiracy ; and two white steam doctors from 
Tennessee, through the instigation of two or three of 
the regular craft, — who regarded these “ steamers,” 
with no little jealousy and indignation, and who in- 
sisted that they were nothing but horse thieves in 
disguise, — had been arrested, along with two or three 
negroes, as concerned in the plot. 

A vigilance committee and volunteer courts had 
been speedily organized, and the black and white 
prisoners condemned to death. Brought out to be 
hanged, they had been urged to confess, which they 
had done very extensively, in the hope, probably, of 
saving their lives ; and from their confessions, dressed 
up by the lively imagination of the court and the 
bystanders, the plot, whether real or imaginary, had 
been made to assume a most alarming shape. 

According to these confessions, it was not a mere 
negro or servile plot, but had been got up by a gang 
of white desperadoes, negro thieves, horse thieves, 
gamblers, and other ingenious gentlemen who lived 
by their wits, to whom were ascribed ideas as to 
the rights of the cunningest and the strongest — 
precisely those to be expected in a slaveholifing com- 
munity. . They were to put themselves at the head 
of the insurgent negroes, were to rob the banks, and 
thus, like so many Catilines, to make themselves 
masters of the country. 

Unable to reach my destination the first day, I 


356 


MEMOIRS OF 


sought hospitality for the night at the house of a 
planter, one of the most respectable men, as I was 
afterwards told, in all that vicinity, but who, instead 
of putting himself forward, as was expected of him, 
to take the lead in unravelling the plot and punishing 
its authors, had chosen to remain quietly at home. 

He had great doubts, I found, whether there was, 
in fact, any plot, and whether the whole thing was not 
a chimera of the imagination. Alarms of negro plots, 
founded on alleged overheard conversations, and 
throwing every body, especially the women and 
children, into the most horrible panics, were as much 
epidemics, he told me, all through the south, as the 
autumn bilious fevers. He was too much accus- 
tomed to those alarms, which had always, so far as 
he knew, ended in smoke, or the hanging of a few 
negroes on suspicion, to pay much attention to them. 
Yet he admitted that the increasing number, at the 
south, of desperate and uneasy white men, without 
property or the means to acquire any, might be likely, 
as the present resource failed of helping one’s self to 
a plantation by squatting on government lands, to 
lead hereafter to frightful commotions. 

We were quietly discussing this subject over a 
cup of tea, when two or three truculent looking white 
men rode up to the house ; and one of them, dis- 
mounting^ handed a dirty and rumpled piece of paper 
to my host. 

As he read it, his brows began to lower. It was, 
in fact, a summons or requisition from the committee 
of vigilance for his speedy personal appearance before 
them, bringing with him, also, the stranger — meaning 
me — who had been traced to his house. 

Upon his inquiring of the bearer what the commit- 
tee of vigilance wanted of him, the answer was, that 
his not taking any part in the proceedings had been 
thought very strange, and that some of the confess- 
ing prisoners had stated something by which he was 
implicated. 

To all this he coolly replied, that he was ready 


A FUGITIVE. 


357 


to answer for his conduct before any regular court, 
but he did not recognize the authority of the commit- 
tee of vigilance. “ As to this gentleman, my guest,” 
he. continued, “ I am a justice of the peace, and if 
you will bring proof against him of any violation 
of the laws, I will issue a warrant for his arrest ; but, 
except on some lawful warrant, I shall not suffer him 
to be taken from my house.” 

The only ground of suspicion against me seemed 
to be, that I was a stranger, who ought not to be al- 
lowed to traverse the country, in its present state of 
alarm, without giving an account of myself. But as 
my host did not think this a sufficient ground for the 
issue of a warrant, the messengers of the vigilance com- 
mittee shortly departed; not without furious threats 
of returning soon with men enough to take us both 
by force, and pretty plain intimations that after this 
resistance to the authority of the committee, which 
could be looked upon in no other light than as plain 
proof of our concern in the plot, we could reasonably 
expect nothing short of hanging. Six white men, 
and eighteen negroes, they added, had been hung 
already, and many more had been arrested. 

No sooner had these fellows gone, than I turned to 
my host to thank him for his protection ; but almost 
before replying to me, he ordered two horses to be 
saddled. “I wish I could protect you,” he added; 
“but though I mean to stand a siege myself, and 
shall rely, if compelled to surrender, upon my numer- 
ous friends and connections to shield me, it would 
not be safe for you to remain. 

' “ Your horse is hardly fit for a new start ; but I will 
give you a fresh one, and will send yours back to Vicks- 
burg. You shall have my negro man Sambo for a 
guide. He knows the country well, and, if any body 
can, will carry you safe to the banks of the Missis- 
sippi, for which you had better make by the shortest 
cut. Steamboats are passing continually up and 
down. Get on board the first that comes along, and 
forego your travels in these parts for the present.” 


858 


MEMOIRS OF 


No sooner said than done. In fifteen minutes I 
was again on the road ; and travelling all night, under 
the skilful guidance of Sambo, following unfrequent- 
ed paths, swimming creeks and rivers, and fording 
swamps, by morning we reached a lonely wood yard 
on the banks of the river, where the steamers were 
accustomed to stop for fuel. Before long, a boat 
bound to New Orleans made its appearance, and, 
upon a signal for that purpose, she checked her 
course for the moment, and sent a skiff to take me 
on board. 

A few days after arriving in New Orleans, I read 
in the newspapers how the house of Mr Hooper — 
for that was the name of my generous host — had 
been attacked ; how he had barricaded his doors and 
windows ; had wrapped his infant child in a feather 
bed, and, not venturing to employ any of his slaves 
to assist him, had alone defended the house, keeping 
the assailants at bay for some time, and dangerously 
wounding one of their number ; nor had he surren- 
dered till the breaking of his arm by a musket ball 
had made it impossible for him any longer to load 
and fire. His case — as I afterwards learnt, when he 
was brought before the vigilance committee — had 
been a subject of vehement controversy ; but as his 
connections were numerous and powerful, the com- 
mittee did not dare to proceed to extremities against 
him. 


CHAPTER LV. 

Having written a letter of inquiry to Mr Thomas, 
— since the disturbed state of the country had inter- 
rupted my personal visit, — while waiting an answer, 
passing in one of my walks through a principal street 
of New Orleans, I was attracted to enter a large 
warehouse where a sale of slaves was going on at 
auction. 


A FUGITIVE. 


359 


The auctioneer was engaged at the moment in 
the sale of . plantation hands, and mechanics. There 
stood on the block a blacksmith, a first-rate hand, — 
as the auctioneer described him, — who had paid his 
master, as rent for himself, twenty dollars a month, 
clear of all expenses, for the last five years ; and upon 
whom the bid had already risen to fifteen hundred 
dollars. A report, indeed, circulated in the room, that 
he had already paid that sum, out of his extra earnings, 
to purchase his liberty ; which amount his master, a 
Bostonian, settled in New Orleans, had coolly pock- 
eted, and had then sent the man to be sold at auc- 
tion. The circulation of this story checked the bid- 
ding, since this breach of faith, it was thought, might 
provoke the man to run away. The auctioneer 
steadily denied the truth of it ; but being called upon 
to ask the man himself, he refused to do so, observ- 
ing, with a laugh, that the evidence of a slave would 
not be received against his master. 

My attention was presently attracted to a group of 
female slaves, apparently of a superior class, and most 
of them very light colored. One woman, in particu- 
lar, soon fixed and absorbed all my attention. Those 
eyes ! That mouth ! Her figure was more plump, 
and fuller ; the face was older than I remembered it; 
but her raven hair, and pearl-like teeth perfectly 
preserved, still gave her a youthful aspect. Her 
height was the same, and there was the same grace 
in every gesture and movement. I watched her with 
the intensest interest. Was it possible that I could 
be mistaken? No; ’twas she, — ’twas Gassy, — 
Twas the long lost wife I sought; found at last; 
but where ? 

Press, reader, to thy heart the wife of thy bosom, 
and thank God that you were both born free ! After 
twenty years’ separation, I had again found mine, — 
ripe in womanly beauty, — exposed for sale in a slave 
auction room ! Yet even there, reduced to that depth 
of degradation and misery, she was still calm and self- 
collected ; evidently, by her manner, imposing a certain 


360 


MEMOIRS OF 


restraint on the crowd of licentious idlers, callous 
speculators, and anxious inquirers after human con- 
veniences, to whose inspection, and now gross, now 
rude, and now teasing inquisition she, in common 
with the rest, was subjected. 

The present, however, was not a moment to give 
way to feeling. It was necessary to act. Summon- 
ing up all my energies, I rapidly considered with my- 
self what course I best might adopt. To draw Cassy^s 
attention to myself in any way would be a hazardous 
operation ; for I felt certain that as I had recognized 
her, so she would not fail to recognize me ; and so 
public and peculiar a place as a slave auction room 
was hardly a desirable spot for our first interview, 
which, coming upon her with even greater surprise 
than upon myself, might have led to a scene very 
embarrassing, if not hazardous. 

Looking round the room, as these thoughts ran 
through my mind, whom should I see — as if fortune or 
providence had determined to favor me — but my late 
acquaintance, Mr John Colter, who was walking about 
the room examining the various groups of slaves, es- 
pecially the females, with the air — to use his own 
expression — of both connoisseur and amateur, and 
with pretty evident indications of his own opinion as 
to his special competency to pass judgment as to the 
value of the article. 

Catching my eye almost at the same instant that 
mine rested on him, he approached me with an air 
of much interest, and inquired what I did there, and 
what had been the success of my Mississippi trav- 
els ? “I feared,” he added, in a low tone, “ when I 
read the account of that hanging affair in the news- 
papers, that I had got' you into a scrape. I am glad 
to find you know how to take care of yourself. Here 
ill the south-west it is pretty necessary to have one’s 
eye teeth cut, and one’s eyes open.” 

“ You are just the man,” I answered, “ whom I 
wanted to see. Your assistance may now be inval- 
uable to me. I have found her ! She’s here ! ” 


A FUGITIVE. 361 

“ Here ! The deuce she is ! Where ? Offered for 
sale ? Have you bought her ? 

I pointed out Gassy, as she stood with the other 
women, with downcast eyes, and apparently ab- 
sorbed in thought. Colter prided himself on the 
strength of his memory ; never forgetting, as he said, 
a face which he had once seen ; but what could his 
memory be, in this case, compared to mine ? After 
two or three glances at her, he admitted that likely 
enough I might be correct; but, to make all sure, 
while I walked in another direction, he approached 
her, called her by name, reminded her of Augusta 
and the slave prison there, and fully satisfied him- 
self, in a short conversation, that she was in fact 
the same person about whose sale he had quar- 
relled with Gouge ; and that person, from circum- 
stances already mentioned, I was satisfied was my 
Gassy. 

Upon his inquiring of her why she was here, and 
if she was now to be sold? — she answered, that she 
was brought here for that purpose; but that they 
had no right to sell her, for she was free. Her for- 
mer owner, a Mr Curtis, had given her free papers 
many years ago ;'T)ut he was lately dead, and cer- 
tain persons, claiming to be his heirs, were now at- 
tempting to sell her. 

Colter promised to inquire into the case, and to 
befriend her in the matter ; for which she expressed 
great gratitude, adding that she had all along felt 
confident that Heaven would send her aid in some 
shape. 

He then hastened to report to me; and while he 
and I were still discussing the subject, and consider- 
ing what was best to be done, the auctioneer, hav-‘ 
ing finished the sale of the plantation slaves, began 
upon the group of females in which Gassy stood. 

The one first placed upon the auction block was a 
finely-formed black girl, neatly dressed, her good- 
humored face well set off by a bright-colored handker- 
chief twisted turban-fashion about her head. Though 

31 


362 


MEMOIRS OF 


apparently very young, she held in her arms, and 
caressed with much fondness, a sprightly infant of 
seven or eight months, quite richly dressed, and of a 
color a good deal lighter than the mother’s. 

“ Jemima,”* shouted the auctioneer ; “ first-rate 
chambermaid ; hold up your head, my dear, and let 
the gentlemen see you ; brought up in one of the 
first families of Virginia; a good seamstress, top,” 
— reading from a paper or list containing the names 
and descriptions of the articles on sale, — “only fif- 
teen years of age, warranted sound and healthy in 
every particillar I ” 

“And do you sell the pappoose too, mother and 
child in one lot?” asked a thin, squint-eyed, hard- 
featured fellow. 

“ You know the law don’t allow us,” said the auc- 
tioneer, with a wink, “ to offer the mother and child 
separately. Whoever buys the girl has the privilege 
to take the child if he chooses, at the usual rate, — a 
dollar a pound for sucklings ; that’s the regular price 
every where ; that you know, old fellow, as well as L, 
You’ve bought ’em before now, I reckon.” 

This drew out a laugh at the expense of the ques- 
tioner, who, however, did not seem to notice it ; and 
the auctioneer having nodded assent to his inquiry, 
whether, if not so taken, the child might be had sep- 
arately, the sale went on. 

“ Only three hundred dollars offered,” cried the auc- 
tioneer ; “ only three hundred dollars for this first-rate 
chambermaid and seamstress, raised in one of the 
first families of Virginia, sold for no fault, only to 
raise the wind.” 

“ Pretty common case with those first Virginia fam- 
ilies,” said a voice from among the crowd ; “ they 
only live by eating their niggers ” 

“ Warranted,” — so the auctioneer went on, without 
noticing the interruption, which raised another laugh 
among some of the company, — “ warranted healthy, 
sound, and honest.” 

“But no virgin,” responded the voice from the 


A FUGITIVE. 363 

crowd a sally which provoked another and still 
more violent explosion of laughter. 

« With privilege to «take the child at a dollar a 
pound,” continued the auctioneer. “ Three hundred 
and fifty! Four hundred! Thank you, sir,” with a 
bow and a bland smile to the bidder. ‘‘ Four hundred 
and fifty ? Did I hear it ? Four hundred and fifty ! 
Five hundred ! Can’t pause, gentlemen ; great heap 
of ’em here to sell to-day. jiUl done at five hundred ? 
Five hundred ! Going ! Five hundred dollars for a 
prime Virginia wench, who begins young, and prom- 
ises to be a great breeder ; only five hundred dollars ! 
Why, upon my honor, gentlemen,” pausing, and lay- 
ing his hammer across his breast, “ upon my honor,” 
— this with a very decided emphasis, — “ she’s worth 
seven hundred and fifty for any body’s use ; a hand- 
some, young, good-natured, stout, and healthy cham- 
bermaid and seamstress, raised in one of the first 
families of Virginia, and sold for only five hundred 
dollars ! We shall be obliged to stop the sale, gen- 
tlemen, if you don’t bid better. All done at five hun- 
dred dollars ? Going at five hundred dollars ! Gone.” 
And the hammer fell. “ Gone for five hundred dollars, 
and mighty cheap at that, to Mr Charles Parker.” 
Here a fat, jolly-looking, youngish gentleman stepped 
fodKrard, and the black girl, looking intently at him, 
and as if pleased with his appearance, smiled con- 
fidingly on her new purchaser. ‘‘ Mr Parker of course 
takes the child,” the auctioneer continued, addressing 
his clerk ; “ add thirty-five dollars for the child, at a 
dollar a pound.” 

“ Not at all ! ” — so the purchaser interposed ; and as 
he spoke, how suddenly and sadly the girl’s counte- 
nance fell ! — “ I’ve bought her for a wet nurse ; I don’t 
want the brat — wouldn’t take it as a gift.” 

I could see, as he spoke, how the mother’s arms 
closed on the child, as if with a convulsive grasp. I 
expected a scene, but the same little squint-eyed, 
hard-featured fellow, whom I had noticed before, 
stepped up to the purchaser, saying in a whisper, 


864 


MEMOIRS OF 


Take it— take it! Fll take it off your hands, and 
give a dollar to boot.” 

As the purchaser cast a doubting sort of a look at 
him, some one in the crowd remarked, “ O, that’s old 
Stubbings, the nigger baby broker ; he makes a busi- 
ness of buying nigger babies ; he’s good ! ” And so ac- 
cepting the offer, Mr Parker took possession of his new 
purchase, the young mother’s smiles returning, with 
a profusion of thanks and “ God bless ye’s,” when she 
found she was to take the child with her ; wholly una- 
ware, as she seemed to be, of the understanding by 
which the infant was to become the property of Stub- 
bings, the speculator in that line, who promised Par- 
ker, in a few whispered words, to arrange matters so as 
to take the brat off quietly the next day, without giv- 
ing the girl a chance to make a fuss. 

“ And now, gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, well 
satisfied, apparently, that the affair just disposed of 
had ended so quietly, “ I have now to offer you a most 
rare chance for a housekeeper.” Here he read from 
the list, “ Gassy ; understands housekeeping in all its 
branches ; perfectly trustworthy, and warranted a 
member of the Methodist church ! I can’t exactly 
say, gentlemen, that she’s young, but she’s in excel- 
lent preservation for all that. Answers to the Eng- 
lish description of ‘ fair — ’ You needn’t laugh ; she’s 
next door to white — she answers, I say, to the Eng- 
lish description of ‘fair, fat, and forty.’ Step up. 
Gassy, girl, and show yourself!” 

O my God ! What did I not suffer at that mo- 
ment ! Yet it was necessary to be quiet. 

Gassy had been separated from the group where 
I had first seen her, and brought forward by some of 
the assistants of the auction room, towards the place 
of sale. But instead of mounting the block as di- 
rected, she stood still beside it ; and as all eyes were 
drawn towards her, she spoke out, in a gentle, but 
very firm and steady tone — how that voice, as fa- 
miliar to my ear as if I had heard it every day for 
the last twenty years, instead of hearing it now for 


A FUGITIVE. 


365 


the first time after a twenty years’ interval, how it 
went through my heart ! — “ No ! ” she said, “ I am 
free. By what right do you pretend to sell me ? ” 

This exclamation, as may well be supposed, pro- 
duced quite an excitement in the auction room. As 
I glanced my eye rapidly over the company, it was 
easy to discover several who seemed to sympathize 
with this claim of freedom, and the auctioneer was 
loudly called upon for explanations. 

“ A very common case, gentlemen,” replied the 
auctioneer, “ very common. The woman, no doubt, 
thought herself free ; no doubt she has lived as free 
for several years past; but that was all by the mere 
indulgence of her late owner. He’s ‘dead, and now 
the heirs have taken possession, and offer her for sale. 
That’s all. Step up. Gassy, step on the block ; you 
see there is no help for it. Gentlemen, who bids ? ” 

“ Stop a moment ! ” said Mr Colter, who now 
quitted my side and stepped forward — “ not quite 
so fast, sir, if you please. I appear here as this wo- 
man’s friend. She is a free woman. Gentlemen will 
please to take warning: any body who buys her 
buys a lawsuit.” 

The peremptory manner in which this was spoken 
seemed to throw cold water upon the sale. Nobody 
made an offer, and the auctioneer, to shield himself 
from the charge of attempting to sell a free woman, 
found it necessary to go into further explanations. 

This woman,. he stated, had formerly belonged to 
Mr James Curtis, a very worthy citizen, lately de- 
ceased, and well known to many of the company. 
He had allowed her, for several years past, to live as a 
free woman, and no doubt the gentleman — it was 
Colter he alluded to — might have every reason for 
supposing her to be so ; but the fact was, she had no 
free papers, or, if she had any, they were not in due 
and proper form ; and Mr James Curtis having died 
suddenly without a will, his brother, Mr Agrippa 
Curtis, of the well-known Boston firm of Curtis, 
Sawin, Byrne, and Co., had succeeded to all his prop 
31 * 


366 


MEMOIRS OF 


erty ; and finding his ownership of this woman un- 
questionable, had directed her to be sold ; “ and here 
comes the owner himself,” said the auctioneer, “ and 
his Boston lawyer with him ; no doubt they can 
satisfy you as to the title.” 

As he spoke I observed two individuals entering 
the room, one a very small man, with a head about 
as large as that of a respectable tabby cat, and with 
little wandering, unquiet eyes, and a compressed, 
pursed-up mouth, that might call to mind the said 
tabby, caught in the act of stealing cream, but while 
seeming to anticipate a box on the ear for her villany, 
still licking her chops all the while, as though the 
cream was all thb sweeter for having been stolen. This 
I afterwards understood was Thomas Littlebody, Esq., 
of Boston, counsellor at law and legal adviser of Mr 
Agrippa Curtis, or Grip Curtis, as he was more com- 
monly called among his familiars, — the principal in 
this business, a bald-headed man about forty, the im- 
penetrable and immovable stolidity of whose features 
made it difficult to form any conjecture, from that 
source, as to his character, beyond the probability 
of his not being likely to be carried away by any 
great excess of sensibility. 

“ A very pretty story,” said Colter, stepping up to 
these two worthies as they entered the room and ap- 
proached the auctioneer, and eyeing them with a look 
that seemed to make them rather uncomfortable. 
“ The company see how it is. I am glad to find no 
Louisianian is concerned in this pitiful, kidnapping 
business. The woman is as free as you dr I. This 
story about the flaw in the papers is all a humbug ; 
nothing in the world but one of your scurvy, low- 
lived, Yankee tricks, to put a few hundred dollars 
into the pocket of a scoundrel. Yet, to save trouble, 
I’m willing to buy off this pretence of claim for a 
hundred dollars. Come, Mr. Auctioneer, go ahead 
with your sale. One hundred dollars — that’s my 
bid.” ^ 

‘‘One hundred dollars!” repeated the auctioneer, 


A FUGITIVE. 


367 


as if mechanically, — “gentlemen, I’m offered one 
hundred dollars.” 

“ I offer this,” said Colter, looking proudly round 
on the company, “to buy off these Yankee blood- 
suckers, and to secure the freedom of a free woman. 
We shall see,” he added, “ whether, under these cir- 
cumstances, any southern gentleman will bid against 
me, or ” — brushing by Mr Curtis and his lawyer, 
and darting at them a malign scowl, such as I hardly 
thought possible from so handsome a face — “any 
swindling Yankee either.” 

Thomas Littlebody, Esq., the Boston lawyer, started 
back some three or four paces, as if this must have cer- 
tainly been meant for him. Mr Grip Curtis, with that 
gravity and immobility which seemed to be a part of 
his nature, stood his ground better ; and, opening his 
great owl-like eyes, observed, with a drawl, “ I hope 
you don’t intend to insinuate any thing against my 
moral character ! ” 

“I shall though,” rejoined Colter, “if you under- 
take to bid at your own auction. It’s quite enough 
to palm off a free woman upon this respectable com- 
pany, without turning buy-bidder at the sale ! ” 

“ One hundred dollars is offered, gentlemen, — one 
hundred dollars ! ” repeated the auctioneer ; — but 
there was no further bid. 

The little squint-eyed baby broker, who had watched 
the whole proceeding with keen interest, as if here 
might be a chance for him to turn an honest penny, 
once opened his mouth as if going to bid ; but, at 
a look from Colter, he shut it as suddenly up as if 
his tongue had been pricked witli a bowie knife ; and 
I think Colter showed him the handle of one from 
under his vest. At all events, the apparently intended 
bid died away inaudible. 

“ As gentlemen don’t seem inclined to purchase,” 
said Mr Grip Curtis, stepping forward to the* auction- 
eer’s side, “ I withdraw this woman from the sale.” 

These words filled me with lively alarm ; but Col- 
ter’s practice, I found, had made him a match for any 


868 


MEMOIRS OF 


Yankee of the lot. He coolly produced the adver- 
tisement, closing with these words, “ To be sold with- 
out reserve,” and insisted that the sale should go on. 
In this, the company and the auctioneer sustained 
him ; and, as no other bids were made, presently the 
auctioneer’s hammer fell. “ Sold,” he said, “ for one 
hundred dollars, to Mr ? ” 

“ Cash,” answered Colter, handing out one of the 
very hundred dollar bills which he had won, a few 
weeks before, from the Boston cotton broker. “ Make 
out a receipted bill of this Boston man’s claim to this 
woman, as sold to Mr Archer Moore, of London.” 

The bill was speedily made out, and, in spite of a 
certain degree of dissatisfaction visible meanwhile 
even through the solemn stolidity of the foiled Bos- 
tonian, Colter motioning to Cassy to come with us,, 
to which she responded with all alacrity, and we three 
left the sales room together ; but not before the laugh- 
ing and good-natured auctioneer had another woman 
on the auction block, a lady’s maid of sixteen, raised in 
a good Maryland family, warranted intact, and title un- 
questionable, upon whom he solicited a generous bid. 

I shall not undertake to describe the scene be- 
tween myself and Cassy, when she came to recog- 
nize in me, as she speedily did, her long lost husband. 
Her joy at the meeting was no less exalted than mine ; 
but her surprise was greatly diminished by a confi- 
dent expectation which, it seemed, she had all along 
entertained, and which had formed with her a settled 
article of belief, — the hope of sanguine souls easily 
transforming itself into faith, — that sooner or later 
she should certainly again find me. And so, like a 
true wife and lover, she had kept, in all this long ab- 
sence, the best place in her heart empty, swept, and 
garnished, and waiting to receive me ; and now she 
clasped me to it, rather as him whose return from a 
long wandering she had day by day and night by 
night patiently expected and waited for, than as one 
irretrievably lost, and unexpectedly, however wel- 
comely, found. 


A FUGITIVE. 


369 


O, tie of love, and natural bond of marriage, 
union of hearts, which laws and priestly benedic- 
tions may sanction if they choose, but cannot make ; 
so neither can time, nor separation, nor prosperity, 
nor suffering, nor all that unbridled power may in- 
flict, or helplessness submit to, nor aught save death, 
nor death itself, undo thee ! 


CHAPTER LVL 

Tije new mistress — into whose hands, by the hu- 
mane interference of Mr Colter, Cassy had passed 
from the slave pen of those pious and respectable 
gentlemen. Gouge and McGrab — was, as I knew 
already, from Goiter’s account of the matter, the 
newly-married New England wife of Mr. Thomas, 
a Mississippi cotton planter. 

Born on a little New Hampshire farm, the child of 
poor parents, but, like so many other New England 
girls, anxious to do something for herself, the new 
Mrs Thomas, when she first became acquainted with 
her future husband, had been employed as one of the 
teachers at a fashionable boarding school, at which 
he had placed, for their education, two young daugh- 
ters of his by a former wife. 

The current idea in New England of a southern 
cotton planter is very much that which prevails, or used 
to prevail, in Great Britain of a West Indian. He is 
imagined to be a fine, bold, dashing young fellow, ele- 
gant and accomplished, amiable and charming, with 
plenty of money, and nothing to do but to amuse 
himself and his friends — an idea formed from a few 
specimens to be seen at watering-places, who, for the 
sake of dashing away for a few weeks at the north, 
run after by all the young women, and old ones too, 
with marriageable daughters on their hands, and 
stared at by all the greenhorns — are willing to starve. 


.370 


MEMOIRS OF 


pinch, and be dunned at home, with now and then a 
visit from the sheriff, for all the rest of the year. 

The young Mrs Thomas that was to be, as yet 
Miss Jemima Devens, delighted at the idea of having 
captivated a southern planter, and of passing sudden- 
ly from poverty to riches, hastened to accept the offer 
of his heart and fortune, which Mr Thomas made 
her after a week’s acquaintance, in the course of 
which they had met three times. Unfortunately she 
did not stop to consider that, southern planter or not, 
Mr Thomas was old enough to be her father, had a 
vulgar, stupid, sleepy look, could not speak English 
grammatically, and was an enormous consumer of 
tobacco and brandy ; his affection, even during his 
courtship, divided pretty equally, to all appearances, 
between chewing, smoking, mint juleps, and Miss 
Devens, notwithstanding his frequent protestations 
that he cared for nothing in the world but her. 

That he was really in love with her, so far as it was 
possible for such an oyster to be in love, was no 
doubt true ; and for a young lady without connections 
or money, dependent on her own efforts, with no 
charms or accomplishments beyond those possessed 
by a thousand other competitors, and beginning, also, 
to verge to the age when the sinking into old maid- 
hood comes to be considered as a possible, however 
awful contingency, — for such a young lady to be fall- 
en in love with, even though it be by an oyster in 
the similitude of a man, is a thing not to be de- 
spised ; and the said human oyster having the repu- 
tation of being rich, and able to support her in idle- 
ness and luxury, what proportion of girls of the age 
and in the position of Miss Devens, whether in New 
England or Old, or elsewhere, would refuse to accept 
him for a husband ? 

Miss Devens did confess to some little misgiving 
on one point. She had a great horror of negroes — 
a natural antipathy, as she thought; though she 
did remember, that when a very little girl, they used 
to frighten her into good behavior by threatening to 


A FUGITIVE. 


371 


give her away to an old black woman, the only black 
person any where in the neighborhood of the village 
in which she was born, who lived all alone by herself, 
in a little hut surrounded by woods, where she sold 
root beer in the summer time to the passers by, dealt 
in all sorfs of herbs, as to which she was reported to 
be wondrous knowing, and had, besides, at least 
among the children, the reputation of being a witch. 

The idea of going to live upon a plantation where 
she would have nobody about her hardly but black 
people did stagger her resolution a little ; till Mr 
Thomas reassured her by suggesting how comforta- 
ble it was to own one’s own servants, whom one could 
make do just as one pleased, and by the informa- 
tion that there were plenty of light-colored people 
among the slaves, and that she should have a maid 
of her own as near white as possible — a promise on 
the strength of which Gassy had been bought for her, 
as already mentioned. 

The new Mrs Thomas had pictured to herself, as her 
destined future home, an elegant villa, splendidly fur- 
nished, surrounded with beautiful and fragrant tropical 
shrubbery, except the inevitable nuisance of the ne- 
groes, — to which she hoped to accustom herself in 
time, or for which she was willing to accept the orange 
blossoms as an antidote, — a perfect southern paradise. 
Mr Thomas, it is true, good easy man, had never 
promised her any thing of the sort ; but as young 
ladies often will, she had taken it all for granted as a 
matter of course. Judge, then, of her disappoint- 
ment, when, on reaching Mount Flat, — for that was 
the name which Mr Thomas had given to his planta- 
tion, determined, as he said, to stick to the truth, and 
yet not to be outdone by any oT the Mount Pleas- 
ants, Monticellos, and other high-sounding names of 
the neighborhood, — judge of her surprise to find her 
expected villa in the shape of four log houses, con- 
nected together by a floored and covered passage, 
without carpets, paper-hangings, or even plaster, and 
with roofs so imperfect that in every heavy storm of 


372 


MEMOIRS OF 


rain, every room of the four, except only that used as 
her bed-room, was completely afloat. Some detached 
log houses, at a little distance on either side, served 
as additional sleeping rooms, and others, a little in 
the rear, as kitchen and storehouses ; and still farther 
back, but still in sight of the principal mansion, was a 
long string of miserable little huts, ihe town, as they 
called it, occupied by the plantation slaves. As to 
shrubbery, there were no enclosures at all about the 
house, except one, half decayed, of what seemed 
to have been intended as a garden, but which was 
now quite grown up with weeds and bushes. The 
hogs, the mules, a few half-starved cows, and a 
whole bevy of naked negro children, ranged freely 
about the house ; and though there seemed once to 
have been some attempts at shrubbery, that was 
now all ruined and destroyed. 

The former Mrs Thomas, belonging, as she always 
took pains to let the company know, to one of the 
first families of Virginia, was in fact a very notable 
woman, whose masculine temper and active spirit 
had counterbalanced, so far as domestic affairs were 
concerned, the dozy disposition of her husband. By 
dint of bustling, scolding, and the free use of the 
cowhide, which she wielded with a grace and dexter- 
ity hardly to be attained except by those females 
who have had the advantage of a thoroughly southern 
education in the best families, she had contrived to 
keep things in tolerable order ; but shortly after her 
death, some six years before, the man whom she had 
employed to keep the garden and the grounds about 
the house, had been taken off and placed in the cotton 
field, and every thing in the house and around it had 
since been left to" take care of itself ; and with the re- 
sults that might have been expected, there not being 
in the house a whole piece of furniture of any de- 
scription, and the entire aspect of things as untidy, 
uncomfortable, neglected, and dilapidated as can well 
be imagined. 

To complete the dismay of Mrs Thomas, and what 


A FUGITIVE. 


373 


gave a good deal of a shock to her New England 
ideas, among the black children whom she found run- 
ning and romping in front of the house at the mo- 
ment of her arrival — the whole group having, in fact, 
assembled, to welcome home master and the new 
mistress — were quite a number of boys and girls 
eight or ten years old, naked as they were born, or 
with only some fragment of a tattered and filthy shirt 
hanging about them, begrimmed with dirt, and shout- 
ing and chattering, as she said to Gassy, like so 
many imps of the evil one himself. 

But within the house a still more disagreeable re- 
ception awaited her. She found the keys and the 
general direction of affairs under the management of 
a tall, portly, middle-aged black woman, commonly 
called aunt Emma, of formidable size and strength, 
who, having been a favorite upper servant, and sort 
of prime minister, of the late Mrs Thomas, had suc- 
ceeded, on her death, to the general control of the 
household. In the kitchen ruled supreme aunt Di- 
nah, another big black woman, whose face plainly 
enough betrayed the irritability of her temper, stimu- 
lated from time to time by pretty free draughts of 
whiskey. It is not necessary to mention the other 
servants, who were in complete subordination to 
those two, but all of whom, with aunts Emma and 
Dinah at their head, it soon appeared, were parties to 
a conspiracy to set at nought the authority of the 
new Mrs Thomas, and to make her a mere cipher in 
her own house. 

By some means or other, probably from one of Mr 
Thomas’s daughters, whom the ne^-married pair had 
brought home with them, they soon got hold of the 
information that the new mistress was nothing but 
the daughter of a poor man, who worked for his liv- 
ing with his own hands, and herself only a poor 
schoolma’am ; nor could a contempt more sovereign 
of such humble, plebeian, pitiful origin be evinced 
by the daintiest female aristocrat that ever wore 
white kid slippers, than by the black housekeeper and 
the black cook. 

32 


374 


MEMOIRS OF 


“Pretty times these, indeed! very fine times, 
certainly!” exclaimed aunt Emma, with a most 
ominous shake of the head, and imitating, with great 
exactness, the tone, manner, and words of her deceased 
mistress, the first Mrs Thomas, whose representative 
and successor she seemed to consider herself to be, 
and equally bound to look out for the honor of the 
family, — “fine times these, aunt Dinah! that you 
and I, raised in one of the first families of Virginia, 
should have one of these good-for-nothing, no ac- 
count, poor folks put over our heads, — and a Yankee 
too ! O, aunt Dinah, who would a-thought it, that 
two quality niggers like you and I, raised in one of 
the first families of Virginia, and always accustomed 
to decent society, should have to take up with a 
Yankee mistress ? What in heavens and earth could 
possess poor Massa Thomas, that, having once had 
such a wife as old mistress was, belonging to one of 
the first families of Virginia, he must needs go and 
bring home this little Yankee nobody, to disgrace us 
and him too ? ” Such was one of a great number of 
similar outbursts, which Gassy, and indeed Mrs 
Thomas herself, could hardly fail to overhear, since 
the discontented housekeeper made very little privacy 
of her griefs. 

. So far, indeed, did she carry it, that when the new 
Mrs Thomas, after being in the house for three or 
four weeks, intimated to aunt Emma her intention to 
assume in person the position of housekeeper, and 
called upon her to give up the keys, she snapped 
her fingers with significant contempt in the face of 
her new mistress, and absolutely refused. Her old 
mistress — no poor body, but born of one of the first 
families of Virginia — had brought her into Massa 
Thomas’s family, and had made her housekeeper, and 
on her death bed had made her husband promise that 
he would never sell her, but that she always should 
be housekeeper ; and housekeeper she meant to be 
in spite of all the Yankee women and poor white 
folks in creation. 


A FUGITIVE. 


875 


Missis might be content to manage those servants 
she had brought in herself. She had brought in one, 
to be sure, though, according to all accounts, poor 
dear Massa Thomas had to buy her with his own 
money, and to pay a pretty round price too. But 
what right had she to come in and undertake to 
domineer over old mistress’s servants ? And here 
aunt Emma burst out into a loud laugh, partly in 
defiance, and partly in derision, at being called upon 
to give up the keys by such a poverty-stricken Yan- 
kee interloper ; — she, — so she wo.und up, folding her 
arms, and drawing herself up to her full height, 
exactly as the late Mrs Thomas used to do, — she 
who had been raised in one of the first families ^ 
Virginia ! But aunt Emma soon sunk down from 
this high pitch, subsiding into a flood of tears at 
the thought, as she expressed it, of what poor dear, 
dead mistress would say, she, born in one of the first 
families of Virginia, who hated a Yankee as she did 
a toad or a snake, always speaking of them as in fact 
no better than a set of free niggers, — an opinion in 
which aunt Emma seemed very cordially to join, — 
to come back, and find her turned out, and the keys 
in the hands of a Yankee ! 

There is nothing like a strong will, and by virtue 
of it the slave may sometimes usurp the place of the 
master. The new Mrs Thomas made grievous com- 
plaints to her husband, insisting that aunt Emma 
should be whipped and sent into the field. But the 
good-natured, easy old gentleman was so accustomed 
to be himself managed by her, and so tickled at the 
idea of aunt Emma’s contempt for the Yankees, 
which he himself more than half shared, that he 
showed a strong disposition to take her part; nor 
was it till after a six months’ struggle, and a long 
series of curtain lectures, in which particular the wife 
had the advantage of the housekeeper, that she 
finally succeeded in getting possession of the keys, 
and aunt Emma fairly out of the house. She in- 
sisted very strenuously upon having her sent down 


376 


MEMOIRS OF 


the river and sold ; or at least that she should be 
set to work in the field ; and especially that she 
should have a sound flogging for her insolence ; but 
Mr Thomas would consent to neither. Mrs Thomas 
was welcome to flog aunt Emma as much as she 
pleased. The jate Mrs Thomas did sometimes 
use the cowskin on her, he believed ; but during 
the six years that she had been housekeeper for him, 
he never had had occasion to do it, and he shouldn’t 
begin now. The most he could be persuaded to do, 
was to put her out of Mrs Thomas’s sight by hiring 
her out somewhere in the neighborhood, — poor Mrs 
Thomas complaining, in a sort of prophetic spirit, 
that he wanted to keep her near by, when she, his 
poor wife, was dead and gone, as she soon should be, 
to have her for his housekeeper again. 

But, though the black housekeeper was thus at 
last got rid of, the black cook proved a more fprmi- 
dable enemy. Aunt Dinah’s skill in cookery was 
by no means contemptible, and Mr Thomas, who 
was something of an epicure, had become so accus- 
tomed to her particular dishes, that nobody else could 
suit him. All poor Mrs Thomas’s efforts to dislodge 
aunt Dinah from the kitchen proved, in consequence, 
unavailing. She had nothing to do — so Mr Thomas 
told her — but to keep out of the kitchen, and let aunt 
Dinah alone. But that Mrs Thomas could not do. 
She had a great passion for bustling, managing, med- 
dling, fretting and scolding, and scarcely a day passed 
without an encounter between her and aunt Dinah, 
whom she accused, not altogether without reason, of 
not having the slightest idea either of order or neat- 
ness — accusations which aunt Dinah was accustomed, 
to retort by a sort of growling observations to herself, 
that poor folks couldn’t be expected to understand or 
duly value the kitchen management of quality cooks." 

So far did this feud go, that Mrs Thomas declared 
at last her apprehension of being poisoned, and for 
some months would eat nothing except what Gassy 
prepared for her, with her own hands ; though 


A FUGITIVE. 


377 


whether it was aunt Dinah’s dirt, or something more 
fatal, that she dreaded. Gassy could never clearly 
make out. 

In the midst of all these tribulations, which, as she 
complained, were wearing her out by inches, and 
bringing her fast to the grave, aggravating the fever 
and ague by which she constantly suffered, poor 
Mrs Thomas had no confidant or consoler except 
only Gassy. The nearest neighbors were three or 
four miles off. The ladies of these establishments, 
where there were any, — for several of the neighbor- 
ing planters preferred a slave housekeeper to a white 
wife, — were from Virginia and Kentucky, holding 
Yankees in almost as much contempt as aunt Di- 
nah did — a prejudice which Mrs Thomas had too 
little force of character, or power of making herself 
either useful or agreeable, to be able to overcome. 
Her husband was pretty poor company at best. 
However it might have been in the days of his court- 
ship, his wife had long since ceased to compete, 
in his affections, with his more favorite cigar, mint 
julep, and chaw of tobacco ; and to get rid, as he said, 
of her eternal complaints about nothing, he kept out 
of her way as much as possible. Her step-daughter, 
a girl of fourteen, seemed to be in the conspiracy 
with aunt Dinah against her, as were the washer- 
woman, seamstress, and all the rest of the house ser- 
vants and such was the state of nervous uneasiness 
in which they kept her, breaking out occasionally into 
exhibitions by no means very lovely, that she ex- 
pressed one day to Gassy her apprehensions lest these 
ugly black creatures would not only be the destruc- 
tion of her health and good looks, which suffered a 
good deal under the effects of the ague, but the ruin 
of her soul also. She was sure that living on a 
plantation was no place to fit folks for heaven. 

Gassy was impressed with a strong feeling of grati- 
tude towards her unfortunate mistress. She greatly 
pitied, as well the infirmities of her temper, soured 
by sickness and disappointment, and failure in every 
32 * 


378 


MEMOIRS OF 


tiling, as the miserable loneliness and substantial 
state of slavery into which she had sold herself; a 
state all the more disagreeable to her naturally busy 
and bustling temperament, since the post assigned 
her seemed to be, though bearing the name of mis- 
tress, to do nothing and to be nobody. Exerting her- 
self by every means to calm, comfort, and divert her, 
— an office for which she was well fitted by her own 
uniform, sweet, and sunny disposition, — Gassy be- 
came entirely indispensable to her suft’ering mistress. 
This placed her in a rather delicate position as to the 
other servants, who were inclined to include her in 
their hostility and antjpathy to Mrs Thomas. But her 
sweet temper and friendly disposition soon overcame 
all that. Some little favors and judicious compli- 
ments — sincb she always took a decided pleasure in 
making others happy — secured for her even the good 
will of the formidable aunt Dinah herself, into whose 
dominions she was thus able to venture with an im- 
punity never vouchsafed to the mistress. 

Little as there was, any way, of Mrs Thomas, either 
of intellect or heart, this assiduity and good will on 
the part of Gassy, though even she was not safe from 
occasional bursts of impatience and ill temper, were 
by no means thrown away upon her. Finding that 
Gassy had never been taught to reacj, — an accom- 
plishment which none of her former kind mistresses 
had thought necessary, — she volunteered to teach 
her, and her little boy also ; and she persevered in it, 
notwithstanding the occasional jocular threats' of 
Mr Thomas to have her prosecuted under the act 
against teaching slaves to read. Indeed, she seemed 
to take so much consolation in having at last found 
something to do, that, besides teaching Gassy various 
kinds of needlework, in which she was an adept, she 
also gave her lessons on a piano, which Mr Thomas 
had bought at the north, at the time of his marriage, 
and which came round by water. Nor was it long 
before Gassy’s correct ear for music made her a great- 
er proficient than her mistress, which, indeed, was not 
saying much. 


A FUGITIVE. 


379 


So things passed away during three or four years, 
till a bilious fever, which carried off Mrs Thomas, 
exposed Cassy to new vicissitudes. She was no 
longer needed at Mount Flat, and in hopes to get 
back the large sum he had paid for her, Mr Thomas 
sent her off with her child to New Orleans to be sold. 

Among the purchasers who there presented them- 
selves was a Mr Curtis, as Cassy afterwards learnt, 
a native of Boston, and well connected there. Like 
many others from the same city, he had come to 
New Orleans while still quite young. Afterwards en- 
tering into business himself, and succeeding in it, in- 
stead of marrying, he had, as is customary enough 
with the northern adventurers in that city, fallen into 
the habits of the place, and formed a connection with 
a handsome, young, light-colored slave, whom he had 
purchased, and for whom he entertained so strong 
an affection as to have felt very seriously her recent 
death, leaving behind her a little daughter some three 
or four years younger than our boy Montgomery. 

Being of a domestic disposition, and desirous of 
filling up this break in his household establishment, 
Mr Curtis, when his grief was a little assuaged, had 
become a visitant, with that view, of the slave ware- 
houses; and Cassy having at once very decidedly 
struck his fancy, he made a purchase of her and of her 
child. I relate all this very coolly ; but imagine, reader, 
if you can, how I must have felt, when, ignorant of 
the event, I first heard the story from Cassy’s own 
lips ! 

Duly installed in the superintendence of Mr Cur- 
tis’s household, which at this time was on a small 
and modest scale, and in the care of his little daugh- 
ter, it was not long before Mr Curtis intimated to her, 
in a very delicate way, — for he was thoroughly 
amiable, and in every respect a gentleman, — his 
disposition to place the relation between them on a 
more intimate footing. 

He appeared a good deal surprised, contrasting, it 
is probable, Cassy’s behavior with his former experi- 


380 


MEMOIRS OF 


ence, at the coolness with which his advances were 
received, and her attempts to seem not to understand 
them ; but as he prided himself — and not without 
reason — on his personal attractions and winning 
ways with the women, and was, besides, so much 
more a man of sentiment than of passion, as to prize 
the possession of a woman’s heart, however humble, 
far beyond that of her person, this only piqued his 
vanity, and made him the more resolved to make a 
conquest of her. 

Nor, indeed, when the master condescends to make 
love to the slave, the man of the superior class to the 
woman of the inferior one, a king to a subject, a no- 
bleman to a peasant, or even, if he takes the fancy, 
to the wife of a citizen, are such conquests in general 
very difficult. In the case of the slave woman, how- 
ever transient the connection, it still for the moment 
elevates her from her own humble level to that of her 
lover; and in so doing, does more to raise her in her 
own eyes, and those of her class, than any- connection 
she can possibly form within that class — a connection 
called marriage perhaps, but only by courtesy ; since 
it is not so any more than the other; being, like that 
other, in the eye of the law, but a transient cohabita- 
tion, creating no rights of any sort, giving no pater- 
nity to the children, and dissoluble not only at the 
caprice of the man, but at that also of the master 
and his creditors. 

That very same pride, in fact, which impels the 
woman of the superior class ,to shrink with a horror, 
which seems to her instinctive, from any connection 
with the men of the inferior class, as a degradation 
from her own level, a sentiment - not regulated by 
color, but by condition, — since a white woman of re- 
finement and education would just as soon think of 
marrying a negro as one of your newly-imported 
L’ish clod-hoppers, even though he might be an Apollo 
in figure, and, when the dirt was washed off, a perfect 
Adonis in complexion ; — that same pride impels the 
slave woman readily to throw herself into the arms 


A FUGITIVE. 


381 


of any man of the superior class who condescends 
to honor her with his notice ; that very desire for a 
standing in the world which makes the free woman 
so coy and reserved, making the slave woman yield- 
ing and easy; since — looked at merely with that eye 
of prudence by which, more than by choice,, sentiment, 
or passion, the conduct of women in this behalf is 
every where regulated — a left-handed marriage with 
any man of the superior rank is every way more ad- 
vantageous than any thing to be hoped from any 
right-handed marriage — even if that were possible, 
which it is not — with a person of her own degraded 
condition. 

There was, indeed, nothing but Cassy’s affection 
for me, — exposed now to a test such as female con- 
stancy, in civilized countries, is seldom tried by, — 
and a romantic idea which she had taken up that, 
sooner or later, we should certainly again find each 
other, that could have made her proof against the 
efforts of Mr Curtis to win her affections ; efforts, as 
he laughingly told her, enough to have made him 
husband of half the white girls in New Orleans or 
Boston either. 

Besides being a man of sentiment of a delicacy 
not to be extinguished even by a residence in an 
atmosphere so corrupt as that of New Orleans, Mr 
Curtis had also a good deal of romance in his com- 
position. He could not but applaud a constancy and 
tenderness of which he desired himself to become the 
object ; but he begged Cassy not to throw away her 
youth and her charms in an unavailing widow- 
hood, — since the separation between her and me 
was in all respects equivalent to death, — nor, out 
of a mere fancy, to persist in refusing a position for 
herself and her child the best that she could hope ; 
since he promised, in fact, to reward her compliance 
by a gift of freedom, in due time, to herself and the 

If she had any repugnance or dislike to him, he 
would not push the matter ; but ought she, out of 


882 


MEMOIRS OF 


a mere fanciful caprice, to refuse this gratification to 
him, and provision for herself? 

Finding that she was a Methodist, he even prom- 
ised to call in a minister of that persuasion to con- 
secrate their union, if she had scruples on that score ; 
and he strongly advised her to ask the counsel of the 
one at whose chapel she usually attended. 

Though the Methodists hold that a marriage be- 
tween two slaves, celebrated by one of their minis- 
ters, is, in the eye of God, every way complete and 
binding on the parties, — who, according to Method- 
ist ideas, have souls to be saved as well as white peo- 
ple, — yet, notwithstanding the famous text, “Whom 
God hath joined together let not man put asunder,” 
they have been obliged, in the slave states of Amer- 
ica, to concede the supremacy of man ; and to admit 
that parties separated by the command of a master, 
or the operation of the slave trade, may rightly enough 
marry again, even though they know their former part- 
ners to be living. They excuse this by saying, that 
they do it of necessity ; since the people, having little 
taste for celibacy, will form new connections ; and 
they may as well sanction what they cannot help ; 
the same excuse which they give for allowing their 
church members to hold slaves, — the pious brethren 
will do it whether or no ; — a policy, in both cases, 
seeming to look rather to the numbers than to the 
purity of the church, and perhaps partaking some- 
thing more of the wisdom of the serpent than of the 
harmlessness of the dove. But upon this high point 
of ecclesiastical policy I shall not venture to express 
a decided opinion. 

The Methodist clergyman, whom Gassy consulted 
on this occasion, strongly urged her to accept of Mr 
Curtis’s offers, which he assured her she might do — 
considering all the circumstances of the case — with 
a perfectly safe conscience, especially if he was called 
in to consecrate this new connection, which would 
thus become a perfect marriage in the eye of Heaven, 
however human laws might not so regard it. 


A. FUGITIVE. 


383 


But spite of the urgency of ’Mr Curtis, and the 
advice of the minister, still, every time that she pressed 
our boy to her bosom, the image of her lost husband 
rose up before her, and something said in her heart. 
He lives ! He loves you ! Do not give him up ! 

So things went on for a year or more, Mr. Curtis 
still patiently waiting the elfects of time and perse- 
verance, when he was seized by a violent attack of 
yellow fever, which brought him to death’s door, and 
from which he recovered only after a tedious and 
protracted convalescence. It was now Cassy’s turn 
to show her sense of the kindness and delicacy with 
which she had been treated, and of the favor with 
which her master had regarded her. Night and day 
she was his constant and most assiduous nurse ; and 
the physicians, of whom, at different times, three or 
four had been called in, all agreed that it was nothing 
but her tender care — all that a sister, a mother, a wife 
could have bestowed — to which he was indebted for 
his life. 

Having been religiously educated in his childhood, 
the near prospect of death, and the leisure and soli- 
tude of his tedious and painful recovery, served to 
recall many ideas which the tumult of business, the 
gayety of youth, the gross, sensual, worldly atmos- 
phere in which he had so long lived, had well nigh 
extinguished. It was plain, indeed, that Mr Curtis 
rose from his sick bed — -whether from the effect of 
physical or moral causes, or of both combined — in 
many respects an altered man ; as if, indeed, twenty 
years or more had suddenly been added to his age : 
not less amiable or genial, but graver, and with 
thoughts less bent on himself; though he could 
never, at any time, have been accused of being a 
selfish man. 

One of the first things he did, when he was recov- 
ered enough to sit up, was to execute a duplicate 
deed of manumission for Gassy and her child, to go 
into effect as soon as the law would allow, she mean- 
while to superintend his household, receiving a certain 


384 


MEMOIRS OF 


monthly allowance; He also, as Gassy understood, 
executed at the same time a deed of manumission 
of his little daughter Eliza, who still remained under 
Gassy’s care, growing up a nice companion and play- 
mate for our little Montgomery. 

When the children arrived at the proper age, Mr 
Gurtis had sent them to New England for an educa- 
tion ; first Montgomery, and afterwards Eliza, who 
was sent on to the care of Mr Gurtis’s brother 
Agrippa, and placed by him, at Boston, in a select, 
fashionable, aristocratic female school. 

Montgomery, having spent two or three years at a 
New England academy, had been afterwards placed 
in a counting house in New York, and had lately, 
through the patjjonage of his kind benefactor, been 
established there in a business for himself connected 
with the New Orleans trade. 

Gassy’s monthly allowance in the way of wages 
having, in the course of years, and with the addition 
of interest, which Mr Gurtis scrupulously allowed her, 
accumulated to a considerable sum, he had lately in- 
vested it for her in the purchase of a small house and 
garden, in the suburbs of the city, to which — as Mr 
Gurtis contemplated travelling at the north and in 
Europe for his health — she had some time before 
removed. 

Every thing thus, she said, had gone well with 
her, as if she had been a chosen favorite of Provi- 
dence ; except, indeed, the long-deferred fulfilment of 
her still . cherished hope of again finding me. But 
this long course of singular prosperity had at length 
been suddenly and most frightfully overcast. 

News came that Mr Curtis, while on his way to 
Boston, in ascending the Ohio River, had been seri- 
ously injured by the bursting of a boiler; and this was 
followed, not long after, by information of his death. 
When this occurred, which was only a few weeks pre- 
vious, Montgomery was employed in his business at 
New York, and Eliza was still 'at school at Boston. 
She was a beautiful and elegant girl ; her liquid dark 


A FUGITIVE. 


385 


eyes, long black hair, and brunette complexion, in 
strong contrast to the prevailing type of beauty in 
those regions in which light hair, light eyes, and blond 
complexions so generally predominate. She had, 
besides, a grace and elegance of movement very sel- 
dom seen in New England, — where every body is 
more or less awkward, — and all the freedom and vi- 
vacity of a bird, without the feast touch either of that 
blunt, masculine rudeness, or of that embarrassed 
self-consciousness which spoils the address of so 
many of the Boston women. These, by the way, 
are Eliza’s criticisms, not mine; and I shall, there- 
fore, not hold myself answerable for their correctness. 

She passed for the only daughter of Mr Curtis, the 
rich merchant of New Orleans, by a Spanish creole 
wife of his who had died many years ago ; and as the 
reputation of an heiress was thus added to her per- 
sonal attractions, you may be sure that she received 
a great many attentions ; nor was she without offers 
even of marriage from some young sprigs of the 
Boston aristocracy ; but to these she paid no sort of 
attention, as she and Montgomery had been promised 
to each other from early childhood. 

On receiving information of the accident to his 
brother, Mr Agrippa Curtis had set off for Pittsburg, 
where he was ; and in three or four weeks, he returned 
with news of his brother’s death. 

While mourning with all the energetic grief natural 
to her age and origin over this sad news, Eliza found 
herself strangely neglected by her late fond school 
companions, not one of whom came near her ; and 
while she was wondering what the matter could be, 
she received a note from the teacher, with the infor- 
mation that he could not allow her in his school any 
longer. It seems that a report had suddenly spread, 
that Eliza had African blood in her veins ; that she 
was not Mr Curtis’s lawful child, nor his heir, but 
only the daughter of a slave woman. 

Most fierce was the indignation expressed by the 
mothers of Eliza’s school companions ; especially by 
33 


386 


MEMOIRS OF 


the daughter of a drunken tallow-chandler, who had 
married In her youth the keeper of a small grocery 
and grog shop, but whose husband, having gone into 
the business of distilling, had acquired a great for- 
tune, had bought a house in Beacon Street, and being, 
.like his wife, of a pushing and aspiring disposition, 
had, by a liberal expenditure of money, placed her at 
the head of the fashion in Boston. This aristocratic 
lady thought it a most scandalous shame — and she 
found many sympathizers — that people of good fam- 
ily should be so shockingly imposed upon, as to have 
such a colored trollop insinuated into the same school 
with their well-born daughters. Wasn’t there a 
school down in Belknap Street especially intended 
for colored folks, and why hadn’t she been sent there? 
This sketch of this Mrs Highflyer — for that was the 
name of this fashionable Boston lady — I must also 
credit to Eliza, who, to confess the truth, was a good 
deal of a rogue and a mimic, with an eye to the ridic- 
ulous, and a little tendency to caricature. 

Nobody seemed to sympathize more completely 
with Mrs Highflyer than Mr Agrippa Curtis himself, 
though he had known perfectly well Eliza’s origin 
from the beginning, and had been himself the person 
to introduce her into Boston society and the fashion- 
able school she had attended. His relation to his 
deceased brother, of whose property he gave himself 
out as the heir, made it improper for him, he said, to 
express himself freely as to his singular conduct, in 
the introduction into the fashionable society and re- 
spectable families of Boston of such a low person ; 
though, in fact, his brother was a strange, unaccount- 
able man in many respects, and to him quite un- 
fathomable. But he did not hesitate to express 
himself in the most decided terms to poor Eliza, 
when she called upon him for protection a‘nd advice, 
going so far as actually to order her out of his house, 
as a vile cheat and impostor. 

The keeper of the fashionable boarding house 
where she lodged was prompt to imitate these aris- 


A FUGITIVE. 


387 


tocratic examples; in fact, the boarders themselves 
were all up in arms, especially the women, — for the 
men did not seem to have so much objection to her,-— 
threatening to leave if she were not turned out ; and 
the poor girl might, perhaps, have been obliged to 
sleep* in the street, had not a little milliner, to whom 
she had formerly shown some kindnesses, taken her 
home even at the risk of offending all her fashionable 
customers. 

She wrote at once to Montgomery, at New York, 
who came on immediately to her assistance. Hap- 
pening to meet Mr Agrippa Curtis in State Street, 
about the time of high change, he expressed to him, 
in pretty plain terms, his sense of his conduct. That 
gentleman — he passed for such in Boston, notwith- 
standing a prevailing rumor that the mercantile firm 
of Curtis, Sawin, Byrne, and Co., to which he belonged, 
had laid the foundation of their fortune by an under- 
hand connection with the Brazilian slave trade— re- 
torted, in great dudgeon, that he was not to be lectured 

by any cursed runaway nigger, the son of a ; a 

polite allusion to Montgomery’s descent, a circum- 
stance with which Mr Grip Curtis had become well 
acquainted, in visits to his brother at New Orleans. 
Montgomery replied by knocking the scoundrel down 
on the spot ; and one of the bystanders having the 
good nature to hand him a stick, — for Mr Agrippa 
Curtis, though highly respectable, was not very pop- 
ular,, — as the fellow rose up my boy proceeded to 
give him a severe caning, to the great apparent satis- 
faction of at least half of the assembled' merchants, 
some of whom made a ring around them, in order, 
as they said, to have fair play ; perhaps, too, for the 
better chance of enjoying Mr Grip’s capers and con- 
tortions, which, as Montgomery wrote to his mother, 
were highly ridiculous. 

Mr Agrippa Curtis immediately made a complaint 
at the Police Court, before which Montgomery Y^as 
had up and filled twenty dollars. He also com- 
menced a private suit, laying his damages at ten 


388 


MEMOIRS OF 


thousand dollars, in hopes to prevent Montgomer3^’s 
getting bail, in which, however, he did not succeed. 

As Montgomery, so soon as he had got bail in Mi- 
Grip Curtis’s suit, was preparing to take Eliza with him 
to New York, a letter to her arrived from a Mr Gilmore, 
a lawyer in New Orleans, who had all along * been 
the confidential adviser and law agent of Mr Curtis, 
informing her of Mr Curtis’s death, and that certain 
business affairs indispensably required her immediate 
presence at New Orleans, and enclosing a draft to pay 
her passage and expenses. On reaching New York 
a similar letter was found there for Montgomery. 
Neither of the young people had any reason to 
imagine that these letters were not written in perfect 
good faith. They knew Mr Gilmore as a portly, 
round-faced, smiling, benevolent-looking, white-haired, 
oldish gentleman, of whom Mr James Curtis thought 
very highly; and as they had abundant reasons for 
supposing that he had made some provision for 
them by will, it seemed reasonable enough that their 
presence at New Orleans might be necessary. But 
some business arrangements required Montgomery’s 
previous attention, and sending on Eliza by packet, 
he proposed to follow himself as soon as he could. 

Arriving safely at New Orleans much about the 
same time that I did, Eliza had gone directly to 
Cassy’s house, who, in a day or two, had waited on 
Mr Gilmore to inform him of her arrival. The de- 
ceased Mr Curtis had several times assured Cassy, 
and particularly just before he left New Orleans 
the last time, that he had in his will remembered her 
and Montgomery, and had provided handsomely for 
Eliza. She made some inquiries of Mr Gilmore on 
this subject ; but the lawyer answered her evasiveljr, 
telling her that it would be necessary for Eliza to call 
at his house at a certain hour the next day. 

She went ; but did not return. Cassy passed a 
sleepless night of anxiety and alarm, and was pre- 
paring the next morning to go to Mr Gilmore’s in 
pursuit of her, when, by the hand of a black bo^^, she 


A FUGITIVE. 


389 


received a little crumpled note from Eliza, written, 
apparently in great haste, with a pencil on a blank 
leaf torn from some book, stating that she was held 
as prisoner in Mr Gilmore’s house, as his slave, 
bought, as he pretended, of Mr Agrippa Curtis, who 
had just arrived from Boston, claiming the entire 
inheritance of his brother’s property, and herself as a 
part of it ! Gassy was horror-struck at this terrible 
news ; but while she was considering whom to apply 
to,, and what could be done, Mr Agrippa Curtis, ac- 
companied by his Boston lawyer, by. Mr Gilmore, 
and two or three black servants, entered her house, 
claiming to take possession of that and her, as his 
property ; and it was as a sequel to this seizure that 
she had been exposed for sale in the auction room 
where I had so providentially found her, and but for 
which, spite of her protestations to claims of free- 
dom, — which she had no means to substantiate, since 
the very person in whose hands her free papers 
were, had proved traitor and kidnapper, — she would 
doubtless have been sold into some new bondage. 

Such was the story of which, at our first interview, 
Cassy gave me a brief and hasty outline, the particu- 
lars of which I afterwards learnt more at length. 

Thank God, I pressed her to my heart once more, 
my own ; my own true wife ! 

But my boy, my son, and her whom Cassy claimed 
and wept for as her dear, dear daughter, — what 
should be done for Eliza and Montgomery, the one 
already betrayed and entrapped, the other in great 
danger to be so ? 

Again I called Colter into our council, and again 
I found him prompt to sympathize, and ready to act; 
quite delighted indeed, as he said, to help in counter- 
working these two Yankee scoundrels, who had no 
doubt conspired together to destroy Mr Curtis’s will, 
and to divide the estate between them ; seeking to 
reduce Cassy and Eliza, and probably Montgomery 
too, to slavery ; not so much for the sake of what 
they would sell for', he didn’t suppose that even 

33 * 


390 


MEMOIRS OF 


these cursed skinflint Boston kidnappers, mean opin- 
ion as he had of Yankees generally, from what he 
had seen of them at the south, were quite mean 
enough for that, — but because that would be the 
most convenient way to dispose of them ; for if 
allowed to retain their freedom, they might yet make 
trouble, especially if some unexpected duplicate of 
the will should ever happen to turn up. 

As to Montgomery, indeed, it seemed that Mr Grip 
Curtis had a special grudge against him. In fact^as 
we afterwards heard, he had bought, immediately af- 
ter his arrival at New Orleans, an immense cowhide, 
in order, when the young man was once in his power, 
and securely tied up, to take satisfactory revenge upon 
him for his State Street beating. 

With respect to Eliza, it afterwards turned out, 
that the very respectable and pious Mr Gilmore had 
been so captivated at first sight by her personal 
charms and Boston accomplishments, as to have come 
at once to the conclusion to appropriate her and them 
to his own use, under pretence of ownership, and by 
the rights which the law gives a master. I say pious 
Mr Gilmore, for during a visit to New York some 
two or three years before, he had been converted to 
Unitarian Christianity by the preaching of that same 
eloquent Dr Dewey, whose patriotic zeal I have al- 
ready had occasion to referto; and he had since ex- 
erted himself with so much zeal to get up a Unitari- 
an society at New Orleans, as to have acquired the 
nickname of the Deacon, by which he was generally 
known among his lighter-minded acquaintances. 


CHAPTER EVIL 

On Mr Colter’s suggestion, and in order to have 
the assistanee of the law, if we could get any from 
that quarter, I proceeded with him to ask the advice 
df an eminent counsellor. 


A FUGITIVE. 


391 


With respect ter Gassy, as I had bought up Mr. 
Grip Curtis’s pretended claim to her, she seemed safe 
enough ; especially as, by the law of Louisiana, more 
humane and reasonable in this particular than that 
of any other slave state, a master, after allowing his 
slave to live as free for ten years, even without any 
formal emancipation, cannot after that renew his 
clairr^ of ownership ; and it would not be difficult to 
prove that Gassy had for more than ten years past 
l3een recognized as free by the deceased Mr Curtis. 
But the case of Eliza, and especially of Montgom- 
ery, appeared to be surrounded by many legal diffi- 
culties. 

No one in Louisiana, as appeared by an extract 
which the lawyer read to us from the Code Noir^ or 
Slave Code, can emancipate a slave, except by 
special act of the legislature, unless that slave has 
attained the age of thirty years, and has behaved 
well for at least four years preceding his emancipa- 
tion. Nor, according to the decision of the courts, 
are any emancipations, in case of slaves under thirty, 
to be established by the mere allowance of freedom. 
By another provision of the same code, children born 
of a mother then in a state of slavery, follow the 
condition of their mother, and are consequently 
slaves, and belong to the master of the mother; or as 
the civil code of Louisiana expresses it, “ the chil- 
dren of slaves and the young of animals belong to 
the proprietor of the mother of them by right of ac- 
cession.” Such unquestionably was the fact as to 
both Montgomery and Eliza ; indeed it was by pur- 
chase as a slave that Montgomery had originally 
come into the possession of the deceased Mr Curtis ; 
and as neither he nor Eliza were yet thirty years of 
age, nor near it, it did not seem possible that Mr Cur- 
tis could have executed in their behalf any valid act 
of emancipation. They, therefore, remained a part 
of his estate ; and in default of any testamentary pro- 
vision, they passed to Mr Agrippa Curtis, who, as 
his only brother, his father and mother being dead, 


392 


MEMOIRS OF 


was his sole heir. There was, indeed, a provision by 
which slaves under thirty years of age might be 
emancipated, provided the owner, upon explaining 
his motives for it to the judge of the parish and the 
police jury, could obtain the assent of the judge, and 
of three fourths of the jury, to the sufficiency of those 
motives ; but as this could only be done in case of 
slaves born in the state, even if Mr Curtis had 
taken advantage of it in Eliza’s case, it could not 
have afforded any benefit to Montgomery. 

The law of Louisiana, following the civil law, from 
which it is mainly derived, and more humane in this 
respect than the English common law, which prevails 
in the rest of the states, in case a father, by acts or 
words, recognizes and acknowledges as such children 
of his born out of wedlock, gives to them, under the 
name of “natural children,” a claim upon him for 
sustenance, support, and education in some means 
of earning a livelihood. But on the other hand, the 
right of a person, having lawful relations, to dispose 
of his property by gift, either during his life or after his 
death, is very much restricted. In England, and in 
all the United States except Louisiana, a man may 
give or will his property to whom he pleases ; but 
there, if he have lawful children, he can give or will 
nothing to his natural children, though acknowledged 
to be such, beyond a bare subsistence ; and though 
he have no lawful children, yet if he have parents, 
brothers, or sisters, he cannot alienate by gift or will 
above one fourth of his property at the utmost; the 
palpable object of which departure from the civil and 
Spanish law formerly in force is to prevent the mixed 
race from acquiring property by inheritance through 
paternal affection ; while the provision restricting 
emancipation is evidently intended to keep as many 
of them as possible in the condition of slavery. 

It might be, the lawyer told us, that Mr Curtis, in 
sending the two children to a free state, had, in so do- 
ing, made them free ; and perhaps that was one of 
his objects in sending them. Had they remained at 


A FUGITIVE. 


393 


the north, they could not have been reclaimed ; but 
it was not yet a settled question, whether, by return- 
ing back to Louisiana, they did not revert to slavery. 
The Supreme Court of that state had, indeed, once 
decided, as had been done in several other of the 
slave states, that a slave once carried or sent into a 
free state became free beyond all power of reclama- 
tion ; but that decision was made under the influence 
of old-fashioned ideas, which were fast passing into 
oblivion ; and whether the present court would stick 
to that opinion was more than he could venture 
to say. 

As possession was nine points of the law, and in 
all questions relating to slavery, as the lawyer face- 
tiously added, very nearly ten points, Mr Gilmore, in 
having Eliza in his hands, had decidedly the advan- 
tage ; and the lawyer informed us, in passing, that he 
had long known Mr Gilmore as a cunning, deceit- 
ful, cheating rogue ; very smooth and plausible, and 
full of Yankee cant about duty, justice, and reli- 
gion, and willingness to do what was right; but who 
seemed to have very little concern for any duty or 
justice that did not tend to feather his own nest. 

We ought, he told us, if possible, to prevent Mont- 
gomery’s falling into the same trap. In case of any 
attempt to seize him as a slave, even though he 
should ultimately sustain his right to freedom, he 
might still get into great difficulty. By the Slave 
Code, according to an extract that he read, “ free 
people of color ought never to insult or strike white 
people, nor presume to conceive themselves equal to 
the whites ; but on the contrary, they ought to yield 
to them on every occasion, and never speak to or an- 
swer them but with respect, under penalty of impris- 
onment according to the nature of the offence.” 

Now, the best we could make of it was, that Mont- 
gomery was a free colored person. In Virginia and 
Kentucky, in the fourth descent from a negro, all the 
other ancestors being white, the African taint, in 
the eye of the law, is extinguished ; and those thus 


394 


MEMOIRS OF 


descended pass into the mass of white inhabitants, all 
the rights of whom they attain, even though one of 
their great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers had 
been a pure negro. But in several other of the states, 
and Louisiana among them, the African taint never 
can be got rid of. The most minute and impercepti- 
ble drop of African blood, however diluted by the best 
white blood of the nation, still suffices to degrade him 
in whose veins it runs into the class of the free colored, 
who “ are not to presume to conceive themselves 
equal to the whites,” but who are specially required 
to yield to them on every occasion, and never speak 
to or answer them but with respect, under penalty of 
imprisonment.” If, therefore, Montgomery, being 
seized as a slave, should, in vindication of his liberty, 
speak disrespectfully to any of the catchpoles, and 
especially should he venture to repeat the knocking- 
down process, which he had once tried already on the 
person of Mr Grip Curtis, even though we should 
succeed in maintaining his right to freedom, he might 
still find himself exposed to very disagreeable con- 
sequences. 

The first thing, therefore, to be done in Montgom- 
ery’s case was, to prevent his falling into the hands 
of his claimants. As to Eliza, if we could contrive 
some way of getting her out of Gilmore’s hands, we 
should then be in a much better position for main- 
taining her claim to freedom. 

Montgomery, as it fortunately happened, had writ- 
ten to his mother just at leaving New York, mention- 
ing, among other things, the name of the packet in 
which he was to sail ; and this letter, by the like good 
luck, we found in the post office on leaving the law- 
yer’s office. 

Colter immediately employed a boat to proceed 
down the river, carrying a note to Montgomery from 
his mother. The passage of the packet from New 
York had been unusually short. She was found a 
few miles below the city, and according to the recom- 
mendation in the note, Montgomery immediately left 


A FUGITIVE. 


395 


her, and being set on shore by the boat, came up by 
land ; and late that same evening he arrived at a re- 
tired and quiet house in the suburbs, indicated in 
the letter, at which Colter had procured lodgings for 
myself and Gassy. 

The precaution we had taken was fortunate indeed. 
Mr Grip Curtis, as we afterwards found out, had em- 
ployed some agent in New York to watch Montgom- 
ery’s movements, and being informed of the vessel in 
which he came, soon after Montgomery had left, he 
boarded her, with a gang of assistants, on purpose 
to seize him. 

My son, I have thee too ! Snatched from the grasp, — 
saved, for the moment at least, from the already pur- 
chased cowhide of an infuriated and vindictive scoun- 
drel, claiming to own thee ! — Claiming to own my 
son, my boy, my child! no longer, as I left him, a 
prattling infant, but now full-grown in figure, fea- 
tures, every youthful grace and manly beauty, fit to 
compare with any body’s son ! 

Never for me can the high ecstasy again be 
equalled of that moment in which I pressed my 
long lost boy to my bosom ! But for his youthful 
heart, how choked with agony the pleasure of this,,- 
to me so joyous meeting! What was it to find even 
a father, whom, though he had heard so often of him 
from his mother, he had no personal remembrance of, 
when at the same time he learnt the dreadful situa- 
tion of Eliza, his playmate, his girl-friend and confi- 
dant, his lover now and promised wife ! 

How the blood mantled into his cheeks ! How his 
dark eyes — his mother’s, but without their downcast 
mildness — flashed fire at the thought of her danger 
and distress ! It was with much difficulty that we 
detained him for a moment ; and that only by as- 
surances that Colter already had spies about the 
house, so that if Eliza were removed, we should be 
able to trace her. He knew, he said, Mr Gilmore’s 
house, and the adjoining premises, thoroughly. He 
knew also the servants in the family, having been, as 


396 


MEMOIRS OF 


a boy, a decided favorite of Mr Gilmore’s black house- 
keeper. He would contrive some means to enter the 
house that very night, and, at all personal risks, to 
effect Eliza’s rescue. 

Of the thorough scoundrelism of Mr Grip Curtis, 
and his confederate, Mr Gilmore, all doubts were 
now removed. At Montgomery’s last departure from 
New Orleans, a year or so before, to establish him- 
self in business at New York, the deceased Mr Curtis 
had placed in his hands a sealed packet, with written 
directions that it should be opened whenever his will 
was produced and proved in court, or within thirty 
days after his death, in case no will should be pro- 
duced. It did not appear that Mr Curtis entertained 
any suspicions of the possible ill faith of his brother, 
or of Mr Gilmore, or that they would conspire to- 
gether to defeat his intentions, and to misappropriate 
his property. It was only to guard against accidents, 
that he had taken this precaution. 

On opening this package, which Montgomery now 
produced, we found it to contain a duplicate of Mr 
Curtis’s will, executed in due form, by which he be- 
stowed upon Eliza, whom he acknowledged and 
named in it as his natural daughter, one fourth part 
of his entire property, which consisted principally in 
houses in the city of New Orleans, estimated in the 
will to be worth some two hundred thousand dollars. 
This one fourth was all which, by the laws of Louis- 
iana, he could give; the other three quarters going to 
his brother, who, with Mr Gilmore, was made his 
executor. But not content with even this large in- 
heritance, this unworthy brother had conspired, it 
seems, with Mr Gilmore, not only to cheat his broth- 
er’s orphan daughter out of her portion, but, by way 
of effectually stopping her mouth, and preventing all 
reclamations, to reduce her to slavery and concu- 
binage ; Gilmore, besides his part of her portion, to 
have her person also for his share of the spoils. 

The will — after reciting that Mr Curtis had vainly 
several times attempted to obtain the assent of the 


A FUGITIVE. 


397 


parish judge and three fourths of the police jury to 
the manumission of Eliza, as the law required in 
case of slaves under thirty years of age, (that re- 
spectable body not thinking the circumstance that 
she was his only daughter and child a sufficient 
motive to justify it,) — proceeded to state, that he 
had sent her to be educated at Boston, with the 
hope, intention, and desire thereby to make her free ; 
which he declared her to be, so far as it was lawfully 
in his power to mg|,ke her so. But in case the law 
should, notwithstanding his anxiety to divest himself 
of it, reserve to him and his estate any property in, 
or right to, the services of Eliza until her attaining 
to thirty years of age, then, in that case, he devised 
and bequeathed those services to Gassy, — describing 
her as a free woman, manumitted many years since 
by himself, and since employed as his housekeeper, — 
in full confidence that, as she had so long acted the 
part of a mother towards Eliza, she would continue 
to do the same. 

This was all the mention made of Gassy in the 
will ; nor was there any mention of Montgomery, 
beyond a declaration of his freedom; but from a 
separate paper, contained in the parcel, it appeared 
that Mr Gurtis had deposited the sum of twenty 
thousand dollars with a London banker, payable, in 
case of his death, to Montgomery, for the joint ben- 
efit of himself and his mother — a contrivance re- 
sorted to, apparently, for defeating the stringent 
restrictions of the Louisiana law on the power of 
devising property by will in the case of persons leav- 
ing near relations. 

The parcel also contained an official copy of a 
formal act of emancipation, executed many years 
ago, in favor of Gassy, before a notary public; Mr 
Gilmore being one of the witnesses. 

The will wound up with a most solemn adjuration 
to the two executors to watch sedulously over the 
welfare of the testator’s daughter, whose guardians, 
during the continuance of her minority, they were 
declared to be. 

34 


398 


MEMOIRS OF 


What attention they had paid to this adjuration 
we have seen. They were infamous scoundrels, no 
doubt. Who questions it? Yet they had their temp- 
tations. Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece ; to Gil- 
more, the possession of a beautiful girl ; to Grip Curtis, 
the gratification of his furious revenge as well upon 
the mother as on the son. And it was only three 
persons that they sought to reduce to slavery. Pray 
how much worse were they than so many other of 
your northern Gilmores and Curtises, who — without 
any direct and positive temptation at all, beyond 
the uncertain hope of office, or of currying favor with 
southern customers — are ready to do their best to- 
wards the making and keeping of three millions of 
slaves ; even to the hunting down and delivejing up 
to the pretended claimants — without stopping to in- 
quire whether the claim is any better founded than 
that set up by Gilmore and Curtis to Eliza — any 
panting fugitive, man, woma.n, or child, who may 
take refuge among them ? Any man ready to do 
that — any man who does not blush at the very 
thought of it — what is he but a Gilmore and Grip 
Curtis in his soul ? 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

Poor Eliza ! Poor child indeed ! Even at that 
distance, separated by the whole length of the city, 
Montgomery’s heart felt the wild beating of hers, 
knew that it was her hour of need, and would allow 
us to detain him no longer. Rescue her he must and 
would. 

Imagine, you who can, the terror and misery of 
that young girl, going trustingly to the house of her 
father’s friend, and there meeting a man like Mr Grip 
Curtis, of whose faithlessness and brutality she had 
already had some experience in Boston, and being 
told by him — which statement Mr Gilmore con- 


A FUGITIVE, 


399 


firmed — that she was a slave, Mr Gilmore’s slave, 
sold to him by Mr Grip Curfis, to whom she had 
come by inheritance from his brother and her father ! 

“ And, my dear,” said Mr Gilmore, chucking her 
familiarly under the chin, with the leer of an old rep- 
robate, as he was, “ that you may fully comprehend 
the precise legal condition in which you stand, just 
hear what the law of Louisiana says upon the sub- 
ject.” Here he took down a book from a shelf. 
“ This, my girl,” he continued, “ is the Code Noir, 
or Black Code, of this state, and thus it lays down 
the law: ‘ The condition of a slave being merely a 
passive one, his subordination to his master’ — it 
reads /m, child, but it means her too — ‘is not sus- 
ceptible of any modification or restriction, in such a 
manner that he owes to his master, and to all his 
family, a respect without bounds, and an absolute 
obedience; and he is, consequently, to execute all 
the orders which he receive^ from him, his said mas- 
ter, or from them.’ 

“ The civil code,” so this learned lawyer continued, 
“ lays it down much in the same way.” Here he 
read from another and a larger book. “ ‘ A slave is 
one who is in the power of a master to whom he 
belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his 
person^ his industry, and his labor ; he can do noth- 
ing, possess nothing, and acquire nothing but what 
must belong to his master.’ That, my girl, is the 
law of Louisiana, and under that law you are my 
slave. I hope you will see the necessity of conform- 
ing yourself to your condition and to my wishes. 
We must all submit,” he added, with a snuffle, “ to 
the decrees of Providence, and the law of the land.” 

Many young ladies in Eliza’s situation would have 
screamed ; many would have gone into hysterics ; 
many would have fainted; some would have gone 
mad. She did neither. She merely expressed her 
fixed determination never, by any act or consent of 
hers, to give the smallest countenance to any body’s 
pretension to make a slave of her. 


400 


MEMOIRS OF 


Locked up for the night in an attic of the house, 
the next morning she persuaded a black girl, who 
brought her a crust of bread, to take charge of the 
note to Gassy, of which mention has been made. 
Mr Gilmore had directed that nothing should be 
given to her but bread and water, in hopes to bring 
down her spirit. Judging others by himself, the lux- 
urious old villain had imagined that this putting 
her on short allowance would be the surest way of 
bringing her to terms. As there seemed but little 
prospect of human deliverance, fallen as she had into 
the hands of wolves in sheep’s clothing, it only re- 
mained for her to invoke the God of the fatherless to 
guard and protect her. During her second night’s 
solitary imprisonment, her dead father seemed to 
stand beside her, and, with the same kind smile so 
familiar to her memory, to say, with his finger point- 
ing to the distance, “ Fear not, daughter ; a deliverer 
comes ; ” and, as her eyes followed in the direction 
of the finger, she seemed to see Montgomery emer- 
ging from the darkness, and rushing towards her 
with outstretched arms. In her effort to rise to meet 
him, she awoke, and found it but a dream. And yet, 
how much it consoled her ! In the failure of realities, 
how much, indeed, of human happiness has to be 
found in hopes, wishes, and aspirations embodied 
into dreams and visions ! 

Hitherto she had seen nothing more of Mr Gil- 
more, nor of any body but the same black girl who 
once a day brought her bread and water, and who, 
though shy of any communication with her, as she 
seemed to be watched from the passage, yet managed 
to hand her a note from Gassy, conveyed by Goiter’s 
assistance, bidding her escape from the house if 
she could, telling her where to go, and assuring her 
that friends were watching for her in the neighbor- 
hood. 

About the very hour, on the third evening of Eliza’s 
imprisonment, that Montgomery — whom I followed, 
not willing to be separated from him or to trust him 


A FUGITIVE. 


401 


alone in so hazardous an enterprise — left our lodg- 
ings to seek her out, Mr Gilmore, having fortified his 
courage with wine, turned the key of the door, and 
entered her solitary chamber. She had heard his 
footstep on the stair, and had prepared to meet him, 
retreating into a corner behind a small table, which, 
with a chair and an old mattress on the floor, formed 
the entire furniture of her prison. As he came direct- 
ly towards her, she bade him stand off, at the same 
time drawing and holding up a small stiletto, which 
Montgomery, in a playful mood, had hung around her 
neck by a gold chain, just as she was leaving New 
York, telling her that as she was to make the passage 
alone to New Orleans, she must have some weapon 
with which to defend herself ; and, as it happened, 
she had worn it when she went by appointment to 
call on Mr Gilmore. 

He laughed at the sight of the tiny dagger ; but 
stopped, drew the only chair towards him, sat down 
upon it, and began to read her a lecture, one half 
law and the other half divinity, on the folly and 
wickedness of resistance to legal authority, and the 
necessity of submission to the divine ordinances. 
Thomas Littlebody, Esq., the distinguished Boston 
lawyer, or even the reverend Dr Dewey himself, could 
not have done it better. 

He told her that resistance and opposition were as 
useless as they would be sinful and criminal ; that it 
was in vain to hope assistance or relief from any 
quarter ; that Gassy, no better off than herself, had 
been sold into slavery the day before ; and that Mont- 
gomery, having arrived that very evening from New 
York, was by this time in the hands of Mr A^ippa 
Curtis, who, having punished him sufficiently tor his 
insolence, intended to hire him out to work on a 
plantation up the Red River. She never need expect 

to see him more. ' . i u 

At these cruel words, the falsehood of which she 
had no means of knowing, poor Eliza turned deadly 
pale, alarmed more for her lover than herself, and the 
34 * 


402 


MEMOIRS OF 


stiletto was just dropping from her hand, when 
Montgomery, pushing open the door, which stood 
ajar, himself entered the room. 

On reaching the street, before Mr Gilmore’s door, 
we had found the faithful Colter on the watch. He 
had obtained from the servants a knowledge of the 
room in which Eliza was imprisoned. The whole 
three of us, late as it was, on pretence of urgent 
business with Mr Gilmore, gained entrance into the 
house ; and while Colter and myself waited by the 
door below to secure an egress, Montgomery, who 
knew the house, proceeded directly to the room where 
Eliza was. As he trod lightly, he had approached 
the door, and pushed it open without attracting the 
attention of Mr Gilmore, who sat with his back 
towards it, quite engrossed in watching the effects on 
poor Eliza of the falsehoods he was telling, and of 
the law and theology which he was endeavoring to 
impress upon her. 

As she saw Montgomery, she uttered a slight 
scream ; and as Mr Gilmore turned his head to see 
what might be the matter, he found himself seized 
by the throat. Montgomery pitched him head fore- 
most into the corner where the mattress lay, and 
tumbling the chair and table upon him, caught Eliza 
by the hand, and in the twinkling of an eye had her 
down the stairs, and out at the door. We followed 
in the rear ; the whole thing being done in the briefest, 
most quiet, and most orderly manner, and without the 
slightest noise or confusion. 

In half an hour our whole rescued, happy family 
were united — Eliza, Montgomery, Cassy, and myself. 
But we were still in New Orleans; and neither in 
that city, nor elsewhere in the United States of 
America, that country meanly boasting to be free, but 
sunk beneath the dark flood of despotism, was there 
any olive tree rising above the waters, any rest to be 
found for the soles of our feet. 


EXPOUNDING THE CONSTITUTION. Page 402, 








1 



A FUGITIVE. 


403 


CHAPTER LIX. 

The very next morning, by Colter’s assistance, kind 
and zealous to the last, we were on a steamboat 
bound up the river, in which we reached Pittsburg 
without accident or adventure. Thence we crossed 
the mountains to Baltimore, and hastening to New 
York, took passage in one of the Liverpool packets, 
feeling no security, night nor day, till the good, blue, 
deep water of the ocean at length rolled beneath us ; 
nor indeed hardly then, so long as the significant 
stripes of the American flag waved above our heads. 

When we touched the British shore we felt safe. 
Thank God, there is a land that impartially shelters 
fugitives alike from European and from American 
tyranny — Hungarian exiles and American slaves! 

Before leaving New Orleans, Eliza had executed a 
power of attorney to Mr Colter, — to whom the copy 
of Mr Curtis’s will, intrusted to Montgomery, was 
delivered, — to proceed under it at law for the re- 
covery of her share of her father’s inheritance, with 
an agreement for an equal division between them of 
whatever might be got. 

Colter encountered all the obstacles which the 
practised chicanery of Gilmore could place in his 
way ; but he entered into the contest with great spirit ; 
indeed, it seemed to have for him all the excitement 
of the games to which he was accustomed. He 
studied the law himself, the better to push it ; and 
whether or not his experience in his former profession 
was any help to him in his new one, he presently 
made himself known as a very shrewd and managing 
member of the bar. Pursuing Gilmore up and down, 
through every quirk and turning, to aid in which we 
sent occasional supplies of money, he finally estab- 
lished the validity of the will, and after a contest of 
five years, remitted to Eliza her half of the proceeds, 
having well earned the other half for himself. He 


404 


MEMOIRS OF 


still continues to enjoy a good practice at the New 
Orleans bar, and has even been talked of as a candi- 
date for Congress, but is not thought to be southern 
enough in his opinions. 

Mr Grip Curtis’s action against Montgomery for as- 
sault and battery, after lingering along in the Boston 
courts for three or four years, at last came on for trial. 
Mr Agrippa Curtis had retained on his side three or 
four celebrated Boston lawyers, and the one who 
closed the case argued, with great energy, that the 
Union \^ould certainly be dissolved, and society up- 
rooted from its foundations, if the jury did not visit 
with signal damages such an instance of colored in- 
solence towards a citizen every way so amiable and 
highly respectable, and sugh a stanch supporter of 
the Union, as Mr Agrippa Curtis. But all this grave, 
weighty argument, though aided by a most flowing 
oration, full, as the newspapers had it, of the most 
brilliant and beautiful tropes and figures from the 
junior counsel, resulted, much to their disappointment, 
only in a verdict of twenty-five cents damages, which, 
with costs to one quarter part of that amount, were 
duly paid over to Mr Agrippa Curtis’s attorney. The 
jury, by some fortunate accident, happened to be com- 
posed of very low people, mechanics and others; 
there was only a single wholesMe merchant upon 
it, and he not engaged in the southern trade. 

As to Messrs Gilmore and Curtis, they had a fate 
common with those who get their money over the 
devil’s shoulder. Mr Curtis settled in New Orleans, 
engaged in great speculations ; ha(^ at one time the 
reputation of a millionnaire ; but failed, carried down 
Mr Gilmore with him, and a goodly number of his 
Boston friends, including the old firm of Curtis, Saw- 
in, Byrne, and Co. The establishment of his brother’s 
will, and the consequent necessity of disgorging, gave 
him the finishing blow. For several years he lived a 
disgraced and ruined man, very much under the 
weather-board. Some of Gilmore’s trickeries towards 
white clients coming to light, — for cheating colored 


A FUGITIVE. 


405 


people, whether out of their liberty or their property, 
hurts no naan’s reputation at New Orleans, — he lost 
his practice, and sunk pretty much to Mr Grip Cur- 
tis’s level. 

But within a year or two past, since the passage 
of the new fugitive slave act, by which the American 
Union has recently been saved from total destruction, 
these two worthy gentlemen having turned patriots 
and Union-saviors, have quite recovered themselves. 
Under the firm of Gilmore and Curtis, — and Mr Col- 
ter writes me that it is privately whispered that they 
have a judge as a secret partner, — they have estab- 
lished themselves at Philadelphia in a general slave 
catching and kidnapping business. Gilmore has ob- 
tained the appointment of a slave catching commis- 
sioner for the eastern dis’trict of Pennsylvania, and 
Mr Grip Curtis that of assistant to a deputy mar- 
shal, appointed for slave cases exclusively ; and, of 
course, all three, commissioner, catchpole, and judge, 
play beautifully into each other’s hands. 

I need only add, that Montgomery follows with 
profit, at Liverpool, the mercantile pursuits to which 
he had been educated, and that a family of five beau- 
tiful and promising children, of which he and Eliza 
are the happy parents, does not afford much counte- 
nance to the nonsensical physiological theory Jhat the 
mixed race is hybrid and sterile, under which certain 
American statesmen are endeavoring to find shelter 
against the growing inevitable danger by which their 
favorite system of slavery is threatened. • 

In vain, Americans, do you seek to make nature 
a party to your detestable conspiracy against the 
rights of humanity, and your own flesh and blood. 
In vain do your laws proclaim that the children shall 
follow the condition of the mother. The children 
of free fathers are not thus to be cheated of their 
birthright. Day by day, and hour by hour, as the 
chain becomes w’eaker, so the disposition and the 
power to snap it become stronger. Day by day, 


406 


MEMOIRS OF 


and hour by hour, throughout the civilized world, 
sympathy diminishes for you, the oppressors, and 
sympathy increases for your oppressed victims, be- 
coming, as they do, day by day, not by a figure of 
speech, merely, or by a pedigree derived from Adam, 
but as a matter of notorious and contemporary fact, 
more and more your brethren, flesh of your flesh, and 
blood of your blood. 

Can you stand the finger of scorn pointed at you 
by all the civilized world ? 

Can you stand the still, small voice of conscience, 
day by day, and hour by hour, reechoing in your own 
hearts those uncomfortable epithets — slave driver, 
slave breeder, slave hunter, dough face? 

As to you, graybeards in iniquity, with hearts 
seared, faith blighted, hope withered, and love dried 
up, continue, if you will, you and your Aaron, to bow 
down to the golden calf that first seduced you I 

It is your sin, your weakness, your want of faith, 
that have kept your nation wandering this forty 
years in the wilderness. With imaginations too dull 
and gross to raise you to the height of any mental 
Mount Pisgah ; incapable to see, even in your mind’s 
eye, the distant prospect of good things to come; 
longing secretly in your hearts to return to the flesh- 
pots o^ Egypt ; well content to make bricks for the 
Pharaohs ; yourselves slaves hardly less than those 
whom you oppress ; cowardly souls, frightened by 
tales of giants and lions, it were vain to expect that 
you should ever enter the promised land ; cravens, 
fit only to die and to rot in the wilderness I 

But already is coming forward a new generation, 
to whom justice will be something more than a 
mere empty sound ; something as imperiously forced 
upon them by their own sense of right, as by the 
clamors and demands of those who suffer. In vain 
do your priests and your politicians labor to extin- 
guish, in the minds of the rising generation, the idea 
of any Law higher than their own wicked bargains 
and disgraceful enactments. When to uphold slavery 


A FUGITIVE. 


407 


it becomes necessary to preach atheism, we may 
be certain that the day of its downfall is nigh. This 
must surely be the darkness which precedes the 
dawn ; for what greater darkness than this is pos- 
sible ! 

To you, then, uncontaminated children, I appeal ; 
and in mine speak the cries of millions. That which 
hath been hidden from the wise and the prudent, the 
voice of love and mercy shall reveal unto you. 

Love and mercy, did I say? There hardly needs 
that; a decent self-respect, a regard for yourselves 
only, might suffice. 

The whip flourishes also over your heads. The 
white slaves in America are far more numerous than 
the black ones ; not white slaves such as I was, pro- 
nounced so by the law, but white slaves such as you 
are, made such by a base hereditary servility, which, 
methinks, it is time to shake off. 

The question is raised, and can be blinked no 
longer: Shall America be what the fathers and 
founders of her independence wished and hoped — a 
free democracy, based upon the foundation of human 
rights, or shall she degenerate into a miserable re- 
public of Algerines, domineered over by a little self- 
constituted autocracy of slaveholding lynchers and 
blackguards, utterly disregardful of all law, except 
their own will and pleasure ? 

Yes, my young friends, it is to this destiny that 
you are called. IJpon you the decision of this ques- 
tion — no longer to be staved off by any political 
temporizing — is devolved. Those who would be 
free themselves — so it now plainly appears — cannot 
safely be parties to any scheme of oppression. The 
dead and the living cannot be chained together. 
Those chains which you have helped to rivet on the 
limbs of others, you now find, have impercepti- 
bly been twined about yourselves ; and drawn so 
tightly, too, that even your hearts are no longer to 
beat freely. 

Take courage, then, and do as I did. Throw off 


408 


MEMOIRS OF A FUGITIVE. 


the chains I And stop not there; others are also to 
be freed. It seems a doubtful thing ; but courage, 
trust, and perseverance, proof against delay and dis- 
appointment, faith and hope, will do it. I am old, 
and may not live to see it ; but my five grandchildren, 
born, thank God, in free England, surely will. 




£Ja2? 



f r V X 

- .* ■•A " 













> •» 


K ^W V» 


•« * 





p k i 

r « A r 




.< ‘ 


• :„. ■• \- T -<-« 

• r r« , , * 




5HK.f .•f^,'^, -:v -Vi- »■ V ' ,. ': 

» •> - / '•* • »• I ' 


% i» 


• • » ^ i ^ wTIjk^v >' i !■ 

. * ^ V ii\j * VjH>?Mr4lL 

. '■••'“ *: <•».' - 
^ j • hr . • ^ ^ 




'K 


' 4- 


- 0 







• X 


-V 

/r 


.f 


- V 


1 - 


1 

'iM >.•:'? . -r * > *. 

V- *■ ' ■ ’ 4* ' 1 S' 

9 » 




4 • 


> 

,. t 


• *4 ^ 

’x»c i''-, • , - *A ^ 

■ - 4 


‘ V 


, # 

4r,■.^sr'r 



'V 


/r 




I, . .: , 

fr*' v.*' ‘ J ,. > * 


. J 


* f ■ 

» 

' ) ‘ 




■' '/';■■ ^• 


J^' s'".-''-'! 


















i 











‘'o o' ; 

■aS * 

0> , V . „ ‘ * .0 s . > 

<^' '^-r> " %'’•%-» Xi^^§ * '^f 

y .p>-, ■> ^GS|& -fe V? <<■ V -‘9^x,\F ^ 

0 N c , %; ^ ^ . . . « , ^ 0 N . ^ 'V ; ' 

^ (r v^ ^ /y^i^ ^ ^ u r-C<N<\ O 

» ■* 

'■ vV^'^V.^ " '^ - 

%■ •'»,„>” ,d’ "^b '■ ,‘^''~S' ^'‘ 

V' '''*'^ > ^ ^.o'- "'b •" v' - 

^ '' ° ^:r. .o'^ 



7 ,«0 < 

-K 

j> 






‘Of. \'d <•■ 





<=>- 

- '^. • 

^ -x \ '' 

n o o' * 

- / 

V . „ /V *•>'•' . V , >; * =■ ■•"■ 

% -A ^ V 

r V ^ C>. ^ ^ 


**'\o^'’!-'''‘ 

U ^ 

■^oo' .'■ _ 

aH -/^ xO'b. 


- tt* 


\ 




o 


V- K 


aV 


A 


A 






,sj 5 " 

' s%^' ^ 

\v s ^- 

A' " " 


- ^ t> 

^ :K, s '' ^ 0 

fN ► « '^ ' » -f 

C- 

xX V '' 

o o' 



■ . ^ oP 
0 - n ^ jQ 



•>». 


.A 


. 0 ' 

.o'- »'■ 



o , 

s\' 0^0,. ^ * 

t'cv c " « o. 

0- CvTSfv ^ 

'^f., ^ ' 

I ^ . ' 

O 0 ,0' Ar 

^ C^> X> 

“Wv ^ 0 ■»^ 3i^/y?'7^ ^ v^ 


^ .0 s 0 ^ *N* 

^ ^ * 0 

<. 










